Miguel Chevalier (born April 22, 1959, in Mexico) is a French digital and virtual artist. Since 1978, Miguel Chevalier has used computers as a means of expression in the field of the visual arts. He has established himself internationally as one of the pioneers of virtual and digital art.Elisabeth Couturier : « Aujourd’hui cet artiste novateur se voit sollicité par les plus grands musées et fondations à travers le monde pour créer des projections-installations spectaculaires, gigantesques et lumineuses, qui immergent le spectateur dans un bain illimité de motifs et de couleurs mouvantes. Il apparaît comme le chef de file d’une nouvelle esthétique qui s’ancre dans le langage des mathématiques contemporaines autant que dans l’histoire de l’art et marque un nouveau chapitre de la saga des formes. » about Miguel Chevalier (source: artcomoedia.fr)
His multidisciplinary and experimental work addresses the question of immateriality in art, as well as the logics induced by computers, such as hybridization, generativity, interactivity, networking. He develops different themes in his work, such as the relationship between nature and artifice, the observation of flux and networks organizing our contemporary societies, the imaginary of architecture and virtual cities, the transposition of patterns from Islamic art into the digital world. The images he offers perpetually question our relationship to the world.
His works are most often presented in the form of digital installations projected at a large scale. He creates in-situ works that revisit the history and architecture of places through digital art, giving them a new interpretation. He also creates sculptures using 3D printing or laser cutting techniques, which materialize his virtual universes.
Miguel Chevalier has been featured in numerous exhibitions in museums, art centers and galleries all over the world. He also carries out projects in public and architectural spaces.
Biography
Childhood and youth Miguel Chevalier spent his childhood in Mexico where his father was a university researcher studying the history of Latin America. The cultural and artistic environment in which he grew up enabled the emergence of an early interest in art. Regular visitors to the family home included muralists David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rufino Tamayo or Diego Rivera, director Luis Buñuel and architect Luis Barragán, whose violent use of color would significantly influence the artist. The influence of Mexican artists is subsequently noticeable in the monumental dimension of the artist's works, as well as in the attention he pays to the integration of his art into the public space.
During his teenage years he followed his parents to Madrid, where his father took over the management of the Casa de Vélazquez. He discovers with great passion the treasures of Churrigueresque architecture, as well as the European masters' paintings in museums. At the Prado Museum, Miguel Chevalier has the opportunity to discover Goya's work, which he describes as an emotional shock. The reproduction technique as a series such as The Disasters of War impacts him deeply him, much like Andy Warhol's the silkscreened works. In 1974 he also discovered the work of the Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez opening him to kinetic art.
He then moved to Paris, whose cultural richness and numerous exhibitions (including the one on Marcel Duchamp in 1977 and the famous Paris-New York, Paris-Moscow and Paris-Berlin at the Centre Georges Pompidou) struck him as a revelation.
Training Miguel Chevalier joined the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Paris in 1978 where he learned the basics of drawing and sculpture, where he graduated in 1981. Two years later he graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs as well as obtaining a license in art and archeology at the University of Paris La Sorbonne as well as in plastic art at the University of Paris Saint-Charles.
The completion of Miguel Chevalier's training also included a few stays abroad: the Pratt Institute and the School of Visual Arts in New York, thanks to the Lavoisier scholarship from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1984. In the United States, the French artist finally gains access to the first computer-assisted drawing software and realizes the imminent computer revolution about to transform the artistic approach to painting, photography and video. Likewise, his stays at the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto, Japan, from 1993 to 1994, proved to be fundamental in intensifying his relationship with nature which he had already experienced as omnipresent and luxuriant in Latin America and he encountered in the Kyoto's zen gardens like an artificial kingdom where everything is controlled in detail.
Career While the end of the 1970s marks a return to painting through free figuration and graffiti, Miguel Chevalier seeks to generate a new pictorial subject in the field of painting. With the increased presence of computers in the media and the beginning of the Information Society at the beginning of the 1980s, Miguel Chevalier then invests the field of digital art thanks to computers which allow him to modify, animate and experiment with images endlessly. However, the access to IT tools remained difficult.
His encounter with Serge Equilbey, engineer at the CNRS optics center, gave him access to Numelec computers which analyze images by successive processing. CNRS engineers also help him write small pieces of program software, allowing him to manipulate these images. He thus created in 1982-1983 his first digital works with the series entitled “Baroque et Classic”.
The end of the 1980s and the birth of micro-computing is a turning point in Miguel Chevalier's practice by allowing him to acquire a personal computer as well as a color printer. These technological advances enabled a new freedom of creation for the artist and opened up endless possibilities.
With the appearance of the first moderately priced graphics cards, able to calculate thousands of polygons, in between the 90s and the 2000s, the artist could then create his first generative works in 3D with his virtual gardens entitled "Sur-Natures".Miguel Chevalier - Le numérique au service de la création "L’artiste utilise les outils de son temps et il était difficile, après Daniel Buren affirmant qu’il représentait le niveau 0 de la peinture, d’innover en la matière. Il m’est donc apparu évident de recourir à l’informatique dès 83-84 où l’on commençait à parler de la société de l’information. C’est ce territoire, encore vierge, non exploré par la création artistique contemporaine, que j’ai souhaité approfondir Auparavant, il était difficile d’accéder au matériel qui se trouvait à l’époque dans les laboratoires ou dans les chaînes de télévision. Déterminé dans ma démarche de créer des œuvres purement numériques, j’ai réussi peu à peu gagner la confiance d’ingénieurs au CNRS qui m’ont donné accès la nuit au Centre d’Optique, à de gros calculateurs avec lesquels j’ai pu développer mes premières œuvres numériques sur le thème de la nature et de l’artifice. Je me suis aperçu que les ordinateurs m’offraient une plate-forme pour jouer avec le monde de la peinture, de la photographie que l’on pouvait redessiner à souhait, et de la vidéo par la capacité d’animer les images. Mais ces ordinateurs étaient hors de prix pour les particuliers. Quant aux imprimantes, elles étaient strictement en noir et blanc, et je n’avais d’autre recours que de photographier mes créations sur l’écran pour les avoir en couleurs. La fin des années 80 a vu naître la micro-informatique avec des ordinateurs personnels assez puissants et des imprimantes couleurs que j’ai pu acquérir, qui m’ont permis de créer en toute liberté des œuvres en 2D et des petits logiciels génératifs avec des automates cellulaires. Ses possibilités me semblaient illimitées et en transformation perpétuelle. Elles représentaient un fabuleux dictionnaire de formes et de couleurs, à partir duquel je pouvais travailler l’image, la régénérer. Cet outil numérique me proposait de créer des variations infinies et un télescopage des différentes images entre elles. Fin des années 90 début 2000-2005 s’ouvre une nouvelle ère avec l’apparition des jeux vidéo pour adolescents et enfants permettant de s’immerger dans des mondes en 3D temps réel grâce à l’apparition des premières cartes graphiques à prix modérés capable de calculer des milliers de polygones. Cela m’a permis alors de créer mes premières œuvres génératives en 3D avec la constitution d’un herbier virtuel composé de 18 graines permettant générer des jardins virtuels à l’infini intitulée les " Sur-Natures ". De 2005 à 2010 les ordinateurs PC, devenant de moins en moins onéreux, avec des cartes graphiques chaque année de plus en plus puissantes, ont offert au plus grand nombre l’accès au monde des images en 3D et la possibilité de créer des maquettes virtuelles animées très sophistiquées en jouant sur la lumière. La puissance croissante des programmes et des moteurs 3D en open source ( en accès libre et modifiable) comme Pure Data ou Unity, m’ont permis alors de créer des logiciels génératifs et interactifs de réalité virtuelle comme les " Fractal Flowers ", " Pixel liquide" " Seconde nature", " Terra incognita" alors que le même exercice était auparavant impossible à calculer car trop gourmand en calcul.... On est passé de 3 à 25 images à la seconde ! Cette puissance de calcul a ouvert un imaginaire inouï à l’architecture, au monde du cinéma et à la création d’œuvres artistiques. Le chemin est désormais ouvert à de nouvelles innovations dont le créateur doit s’emparer pour explorer le champ infini des possibles." Interviewed by Ariella Masboungi The rapid development of new technologies starting 2005, particularly the development of increasingly powerful and accessible PC computers but also the appearance of open sourced programs and engines such as Pure Data or Unity, led Miguel Chevalier to create, with the help of computer scientists, generative and interactive virtual reality software like “Fractal Flowers”, “Liquid Pixel”, “Second nature” and “Terra incognita”. The arrival of 3D printers also allowed him to explore the materialization of the virtual with works such as "Lilus Arythmeticus said to be Euclid".
With the development of increasingly complex digital works, Miguel Chevalier surrounded himself with a team of specialists in a studio he called La Fabrika, in reference to Andy Warhol's factory. This workshop and research laboratory then allows him, with computer scientists, developers and other collaborators, to experiment with his works on a large scale.
Miguel Chevalier also works to promote the recognition of the field of digital art in the world by closely participating in large-scale exhibitions such as Artistes & Robots at the Grand Palais in 2018 (curators : Laurence Bertrand Dorléac et Jérôme Neutres) or Immaterial / Re-material: A Brief History of Computing Art at the UCCA in Beijing in 2020 (curator: Jérôme Neutres). He was also successively in charge of various teaching, especially for the City of Paris (ADAC), at the Universidad de las Andes de Bogota, at the Universidad de Mexico and at the Centro Nacional de las Artes de Mexico. He held lectures at the École Supérieure d’Art et de Design in Reims, at the École des Beaux-Arts in Rennes, at the École des Beaux-Arts in Metz and at Sciences Po Paris.
Artistic work Miguel Chevalier's work pursues a constant dialogue with the history of art, in a continuity and a metamorphosis of vocabulary, to explore and experiment with a new pictorial language.
Flows and networks