Gilles Conan

For twenty years, and at a time of major potential movements toward the environmental abyss, Gilles Conan has seen light not only in terms of cognition, physics, energy, phenomenology and communication, but also as an element that binds us to the foundation of life in all that is most striking, fleeting, fragile, powerful and ephemeral. Reflecting these preoccupations, the artist’s works seek the greatest possible coherence between the approach, the means used and the artistic vocabulary.

Like an inverted camera obscura, chromosomes uses the self-projection of a bulb, by means of a modified theater spotlight that generates a focal point on the lamp itself. The halogen lamp thus projects its own form, using the light it emits. The ambivalent, transparent and ghostly image brings to mind spectral visions, moonbeams, photo negatives or X-rays. The cognitive quality of the light, both material and immaterial, also evokes its disappearance, lending the whole arrangement a museum aspect. It is nostalgia projected, anticipated.

Loan from the collection of the FRAC Grand Large - Hauts de France in Dunkerque.