From April 20 to May 19, 2018, the Alexandra de Viveiros gallery in Brussels presents “M@terial”, the solo show of the French artist Mathieu Merlet Briand.
Sustained by an immeasurable force that tends to absorb all the stuff of the world, the exodus towards the “virtual”, wasn’t simply reproducing the non-digital world. Pre-digital concepts, ideas, ideologies, philosophies, thoughts and objects of all sorts circulate and shape the inner structures of our digital networks
and environments. However, things got convoluted… lately new objects, concepts, materials, perceptual and existential modes emerge from this intertwined, and indivisible whole that envelops digital, non-digital and nature.
The artefacts presented here look like archaeological remains from a digital environment or assets removed from a video game level. Whatever they are, wherever they came from, they announce the end of a dualism — digital and non-digital matter are now one. They are both there, present-at-hand, even if these artefacts are devoid of any electric voltages.
In this post-Google world created by Mathieu Merlet Briand, basalt, marble, silicon and other elements usually found in nature gain a new materiality. These artefacts embody the ways in which Google perceives, represents and maps the world, using massive collections of images and complex sets of data.
Google Red Marble and the other artefacts on the show are not only materials generated after Google Images. These artefacts are another proof that digital apparatus and networks are not only creating surfaces that attempt to represent the world, they are the world as well.
More information here
1/ Mathieu Merlet Briand, detail, “Google Basalt”, fragment, 2016, 85 x 85 x 20 cm, unique piece.
Couverture : Mathieu Merlet Briand, detail, #silicon, fragment 2, 2018, 100 x 140 x 5 cm, unique piece.
