Vincent Fournier
POST NATURAL HISTORY
Mon 17 May 2013 - Sun 30 Jun 2013
Private viewing: Saturday May 16, 2013 from 5 to 7 PM

A beetle with GPS in its antenna and an insect with spring-loaded legs are part of Vincent Fournier’s cabinet of species: at first sight normal animals, who on the basis of evolutionary genetics, have miraculously transformed in order to adapt to the future’s changing environment.

In the work of the French photographer, Vincent Fournier, science features prominently. Since visiting the Palais de la Découverte in Paris as a young boy, the wonders of the world, such as astronomy, space travel, geology, biology and physics, have continued to fascinate him. These preoccupations are featured in his project ‘The Man Machine’ – in which he photographs robots interposed in everyday life situations in Japan, resulting in startling images. In 2012, he travelled to Brasilia, the utopian city in Brazil, where he documented its citizens and the modernist architecture of Oscar Niemeyer.

Fournier’s latest project, ‘Post Natural History’, which is based on current research regarding synthetic biology and the reprogramming of stem cells, will be presented at the Ravestijn Gallery. It is a mesmerizing cabinet of species.

After photographing the taxidermy models in situ, Fournier showed his pictures to a specialist in evolutionary genetics. Following those discussions, he imagined how these species would evolve in real time, adapting to the future’s changing environment.

Fournier collaborated with a team of specialists at a 3D imaging laboratory in Brussels to have his imaginary evolutions super-imposed onto the photographs of the various species. The results include a collection depicting a lizard with reflective scales, a beetle with GPS in its antenna, and an insect with spring-loaded legs. As Fournier likes the idea to make pictures that are not readily identifiable, which remain ambiguous, he did not want the transformations to be over-stated. For example, in the image of the rabbit only his left eye is replaced with an human eye. Thus, the viewer is not certain whether these species are real or not, or even when and how they were made. For Fournier, it important that the species themselves are objects of beauty, with the reasoning of the transformation being uncertain. ‘Post Natural History’ questions the frontier between the living and the artificial in an aesthetic way. Scientific questioning has always nourished Fournier’s work, but more for its poetry than the actual physics. “I use science to re-enchant the world with magic and beauty”.

Vincent Fournier was born in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) in 1970 and grew up in France on the coast of Brittany. After undergraduate studies in Sociology and a Masters in Visual Arts (Montpellier 1994) he obtained the Diploma of the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles in 1997. His work is represented by a number of galleries and is regularly shown at international art fairs. Three books have been published on Fournier’s work: ‘Past Forward’, ‘Space Project’, and ‘Brasilia’. His work also features in international magazines including Wired and Wallpaper. Vincent Fournier currently lives and works in Paris.


“Past Forward”
by
Vincent Fournier
360 Publishing
Distributed in the Netherlands by Idea Books, Idea Code 12351
270 pages, colour illustrations, 21 x 27 cm, hardback, English
Price 50 euro incl. VAT

“Post Natural History”
by
Vincent Fournier
Éditions be-pôles
Limited Edition box set
Signed by the artist and numbered from 1 to 50
20 colour prints on Fuji Crystal archive
mounted onto embossed board format 33,5 x 49 cm
Price 1.200 euro incl. VAT