Brains
“The 21st century will be the century of the brain” say the neuroscientists.
The marble, chosen to realize the objects of this series of sculptures, operates as the antithesis of immateriality and abstraction. The abstraction of thought of course but also the numerical abstraction. The weight and hardness of the stone force the material presence of the object and in the process raises the question of the place of the body in the face of a technology that advocates dematerialization. The sculpture here installs a critical distance which the spectator must seize.
By opposing the world of matter to the digital sphere, Vincent Du Bois is interested in the distancing that takes place between the top and bottom of the human machine, between body and mind. The virtual images, the modes of connection that put us in network or the filter of the screens through which we receive billions of information are abstract and it is because we are equipped with a capacity of symbolic thought that we can both create and follow this evolution. At the center of this process is the brain, the major tool of our perception. But what is it without the perceptive weapons of the body? To illustrate this paradox of an omnipresent and omnipotent virtuality, the objects sculpted in marble by Vincent Du Bois are inspired by the mind (skull and brain). The subjects are rethought in their formal aspect and are rationalized (brain or cubic skull) or revealed in another way (unfolded brain). Carried by the sometimes crystalline, opaque or translucent aspect of the stone, the sculptures convey new messages and open the debate beyond the biological representation. The advances in biotechnology are so dizzying in their innovations that for the first time in 4.5 billion years of organic evolution, an inorganic intelligence is on the horizon. Micro-technologies are now diving into our bodies and minds to improve them. Unprecedented scenario in our history, the evolution would then be done on purpose. A design conceived by and for humans, bypassing the slow process of adaptation and natural selection. There is no nostalgia in the work of Vincent Du Bois. On the contrary, art is used here to participate and question both a progress that goes faster than our wisdom and a science that imposes its power by depriving us of any notion of choice. The artist takes pleasure in juggling these themes (genetic engineering, cyborgs, artificial intelligence, inorganic life) whose outcome no one can yet predict. The works conceived for this series walk a fine line between the sensual tradition of the hand shaping the material and the digital planning that bypasses it.
