LIGHT
When I tell someone I work with light as a medium, their first reaction evolves invariably from perplexity to relief as they initially think I work as a stage light designer. As soon as I try to explain that light, both artificial and natural, can be used as an artistic medium/material, perplexity regains the upper hand.
Even from an art historical point of view I had to face the same kind of reaction. Light seems such a hackneyed topic that the relevance of my research was systematically questioned and challenged.
In both cases people keep apprehending light as a technique applied either to shows or paintings.
Most of the time people experience difficulties in apprehending light as a material that some artists use the way others use paint, marble or clay for instance.
They then try to bring me back to a more concrete terrain and ask me what type of light I use, citing invariably LEDs, neon tubes and electric bulbs. My amused facial expression indicates that they may not have grasped the whole idea yet...
Used as a medium light reveals its true nature beyond any sort of technical consideration and classification. It relates artworks based on diverse materials such as LED, phosphorescent pigment and video projections. If formally different they are ontologically based on the same medium: light.
Once I have established that light is an artistic medium of its own right, I can consider explaining what my work is actually about: memory.
TRACES OF MEMORY
If light is the medium I use, it is not the purpose of my artistic research. My work focuses on the idea of (collective) memory, and more precisely on the concept of traces of memory.
Due to its rather universal metaphorical nature and ambiguity, light has revealed itself a very convenient tool to materialise and visualise traces of past events or people in a given location.
Most of my installations are site specific and cannot be easily transposed to another site. Each place has its own story and memory that cannot be fully matched to those of another location even though both sites may be historically and/or sociologically closely related.
We all leave our imprint on place we live or work in. These traces are invisible and their nature is intangible. They are the cement in which History is written but are themselves rarely recounted or acknowledged. Light is a powerful means to highlight and relate them.
What I have just said is not some sort of second-rate metaphysical thinking, but a simple fact: History is made of a myriad of collective and individual intertwined histories. History is often reduced to emblematic characters when it actually results from collective events triggered by those characters. An individual has rarely been able to leave their imprint on History unless their action was supported by the masses. This support can take many forms, from the heroicto the most trivial. Our actions have sometimes more serious and collective consequences than we may think.
We live in a world where things and people seem more and more interrelated within a globalised and trade-driven society. Paradoxically this societal model has lead to the decline of interpersonal communication and has completely disrupted the subtle but strong links that connect everyone and everything on both phenomenological and metaphysical levels. We have never enjoyed such a range of communication means and tools but we have never been as isolated and lonely.
Light is a very useful tool to render these interrelations tangible and visible: on one hand it is a flux of matter and energy that easily embodies concepts such as motion, movements and dataflow; on the other hand light ontologically belongs to both phenomenological and metaphysical domains.
My work is an attempt to materialise these connections and to make people aware of them.; and my early in contact with Japanese culture and Buddhism have profoundly influenced both my approach to the world and my artwork.
INTROSPECTIVE AESTHESICS
Todays society suffers from loneliness in company; people have never been as isolated as they are nowadays despite all the social networking tools that are available. We have become more and more distant from the world and the people around us.
My installations seek to show human and societal dynamics that surround us invisibly. Meaningful environments and dynamic situations rather than Beauty per se are what I aim to create. Viewers are left alone to experience these dynamics in an almost physical way. It is then up to the viewer to project to interpret for themselves what they feel.
Installation of glowing in the dark strawbales.
Pierre Auboiron, PhD
Visual artist, lives and works in London, UK
1974
- Pierre was born on 25 April 1974, in Vichy, France
1992
- he obtains his baccalaureate in maths and physics
1997
- he obtains is BSc in Orthoptics, with a major in visual electrophysiology
1999
- he moves to Paris after having obtained his BA in Art History and Archaeology
- he continues studying Art History at Pantheon-Sorbonne University, under the supervision of Prof. Philippe Dagen
2000
- he realises his first ephemeral outdoor installation, Cereal remains commissioned by a private German collector
- he gets a funding from the French Foreign Office (AFAA) to find the potential location of another installation in the South of Morocco, entitled Negative landscape, tribute to Jean Vérame
2001
- he obtains his MA in Contemporary Art History after having defended a dissertion entitled "Have Land artists got a photographic strategy?"
- he realises a installation entitled "Fragmentation" at the Abbey of Jumièges in Nomandy. This piece was commissioned by MONUM and was based on sketches made during his travel to Morocco.
2002
- he is taking part in the collective exhibition "Situations" organised by the PAris based art centre Immannence.
- he is asked to realise, in collaboration with photographer Antoine Manichon, a series of giant projections, entitled Waiting for the Night to fall, onto Lully's Pavilion n in the former Royal China Factory in Sèvres.
- he works on a series of unrealised projects such as Réminiscences, A ciel ouvert, La Marelle and Trans'missions.
- he obtains his MPhil in the History of Art after having defended a dissertation entitled "Light in contemporary art: technique or medium?"
- he embarks on a PhD questioning the use of light as a material in visual arts and architecture since the 1970's, under the supervision of Prof. Philippe Dagen at Pantheon-Sorbonne University.
2003
- he is asked to realise, in collaboration with both the photographer Antoine Manichon and the composer Jacqueline Ozanne, a new series of giant projections onto Lully's Pavilion in the former Royal China Factory in Sèvres.
- after the cancellation of two of his main projects, A ciel ouvert / open-air and Réminiscences, and a disppointing collaboration with a Paris based art dealer he decided to put his artistic career on temporary hold, and concentrates his efforts in writing his PhD dissertation.
2007
- he obtains his PhD cum laude, after having defended his dissertation "Light as a medium in contemporary art since the 1970's" publicly on 27 October 2007.
2008
- he obtains the Qualification as lecturer in the History of contemporary art from the Conseil national des Universités (CNU) in February 2008, but decides not to apply to any public lecturing position in France.
- he starts lecturing the history of contemporary art in Paris.
2009
- he moves permanently to London - but keeps commuting weekly to Paris in order to lecture.
- he eventually launches the specialisation "Art, creativity & entrepreneurship" at the Institut international du Commerce et du Développement, and lectures at the Comédie française.
- he is asked by EDF Foundation to propose a project of group exhibition, he would curate, about artists using light as a medium.
2010
- he works on publishing his PhD dissertation and a monograph of the Austrian artist Erwin Redl.
- he is working with new collaborators on a series of new installations.
Pierre Auboiron got his PhD in the History of contemporary art in 2007 and has been researching and publishing about light as a medium since 2002.
Light as a medium in contemporary art from the 1970s to today
PhD thesis in the History of Contemporary Art (I.1 cum laude)
Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Paris, France
Light in Contemporary Art: Technique or Medium?
MPhil dissertation in the History of Contemporary Art (II.1)
Land Art and Photography: do Land Artists adopt a photographic strategy?
MA dissertation in the History of Contemporary Art (II.1)
Le passeur de lumière
in Yann Kersalé , Gallimard, Paris, 2008.
The use of light as an environmental tracer
in Sensi/able Spaces: Space, Arts & the Environment, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Cambridge Scholars Press, Newcastle, 2007, pp. 167-179.
Indexed Lights
in Futures Past: Thirty Years of Arts Computing / Computers & the History of Art Series, vol. 2, Birkbeck University, Intellect Books Ed, London, 2007, pp. 25-30.
2005
Les lumières de la ville : vers une (ré-)appropriation nocturne de lespace urbain (Urban lights: towards a nocturnal (re-) appropriation of the City)
in Cest ma ville ! De l'appropriation au détournement de l'espace urbain, series Dossiers Sciences Humaines et Sociales, l'Harmattan, Paris, 2005, pp. 119-128.
Art et Management, du fantasme aux fantasmes (Art & Management, from fantasy to daydream)
in Cahier du LaRA, Journal of the Laboratoire de Recherche Appliquée de lICD, Paris, France, June 2010
L'oeuvre d'art technologique à l'heure de sa réalité écologique (The technological work of Art in the age of its ecological actuality)
in Cahier du LaRA, Journal of the Laboratoire de Recherche Appliquée de l'ICD, Paris, France, June 2010
La lumière, un agent particulier sur les terres de lhistoire de lart contemporain
In Figure de lart n°17, La lumière et lart depuis 1950, Presses Universitaires de Pau, France November 2009
When memory becomes visible
in Stimulus Respond, Time, Spring 2008 Edinburgh, UK
in Intellect Quarterly, Thinking in colour, Intellect Books Ed., n° 5, Spring 2007, pp. 21-23
Towards Urban Oneirism, a new Approach to Light in the City
in City in Art, conference proceedings (September 2004), Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences (ISPAN), Warsaw, Poland, 2007, pp. 89-100
La lumière dans l'art depuis 1950
Invited speaker, public debate with the co-authors of Figure de lart n°17, La lumière et lart depuis 1950, Espace Electra, Fondation EDF 3 December 2009, Paris, France
The meaning of Light in todays cities
Guest speaker at the opening of the exhibition, Cold War Neons & Communist Modernity, curated by Dr Ella Chmielewska, The Lighthouse, Scotlands Centre for Architecture, Design and the City, 8 August 4 October 2009, Glasgow, Scotland
The Phenomenological Sublime of light in Contemporary Architecture
Oral presentation, Architecture and Phenomenology, Second International Conference, Seika University, 26-29 June 2009, Kyoto, Japan
Les lumières de la ville, vers un nouvel onirisme urbain
Oral presentation, Les amis des musées de Chambéry, 1st February 2009, Chambéry, France
The Post-Traumatic Sublime of light
Oral presentation, Trauma and the Sublime: an International Interdisciplinary Conference, 6-8 Aug. 2008, Swansea, UK
Le matériau lumière dans la création artistique des années 1970 à nos jours
Oral presentation, Atelier de Rencontres (supervised by Jean-Louis Pradel) Ecole normale supérieure des Arts décoratifs (ENSAD), Paris, France
When Memory becomes visible
Oral presentation, Upheavals of Memory: Defining, Imagining, Creating, Contesting Conference, University College Dublin, Ireland
2006
Oral presentation, Sensi/able Spaces: Space, Arts & the Environment Conference, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland
2004
Oral presentation, City in Art Conference, Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences (ISPAN), Krakow & Warsaw, Poland
Indexed lights
Oral presentation, Computers and the History of Art (CHArt) 20th Annual Conference, Birkbeck University, London, UK
How the use of light as a medium in contemporary art asks History of Art to take a radical and fresh look at itself?
Oral presentation, 1st International Visual Studies Conference: Visual studies in the 21st century, ARCO 04, Madrid, Spain
L'art contemporain fait-il vendre ? (Does Contemporary Art help sales?)
Institut Michelet, Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Paris
Le regard de l'amateur dans le projet de Bernard Faucon : « Le plus beau jour de ma jeunesse » (The question of the non-artistic eye in Bernard Faucons project: The most beautiful day in my youth)
Oral presentation followed by an open discussion with the photographer Bernard Faucon, Institut Michelet, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris
Quel musée pour l'art d'aujourdhui ? (What museum for todays art?)
Invited speaker, public debate, Rouen University and FRAC (Regional Collection for Contemporary Art), Rouen, France
Immanence, un nouvel espace d'art contemporain à Montparnasse (Immanence, a new Art Space in Montparnasse)
Oral presentation and video report, Institut Michelet, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris
Peinture et troubles oculaires (Painting and sight distortions)
Oral presentation, Department of Art History, Blaise-Pascal University, Clermont-Ferrand, France
Les fresques romanes en Bourbonnais du XIIe au XVe siècle (Romanesque frescos in Bourbonnais from the 12th to the 15th centuries)
All Contents are copyrighted - Pierre Auboiron (C) ADAGP 2010
PHOTO CREDITS
Pierre Auboiron
Antoine Manichon
WEBSITE CREDITS
