Basic Information
Description
signed, titled, dated, and numbered 3/8 lower right verso in black ink
a set of exhibition views where the artwork was exhibited, at the macLyon (Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon), France.
The exhibition was called: Échos du passé, promesses du futur (Echoes of the Past, Promises of the Future)
Dates: March 7 to July 13 2025
description provided by the artist’s studio and Auregann Le Bouffant, exhibitions and publications officer at macLYON, as part of the exhibition “Echoes of the Past, Promises of the Future”, presented at macLYON from 7 March to 13 July 2025:
“aurèce vettier is an entity generated by an algorithm. It is an artistic project created by Paul Mouginot in 2019.
His hybrid and collaborative practice oscillates between tangible and digital works. He began by collecting items specific to his personal mythology, such as texts and archives, and then used artificial intelligence to process these data and generate new forms. These eventually took material shape as objects closely linked to, in particular, French expertise and craftsmanship.
la traversée de la forêt [crossing the forest] was devised as a gradual journey through a forest. It is a hybrid installation featuring large bronze trees, oil paintings and tapestries produced specifically for the exhibition. Butterflies set with precious stones complete the piece. The forest seems at first to consist of familiar elements, but mysterious forms gradually emerge that are slightly out of sync with reality: a man who has abandoned his black car, ghosts, a flight of yellow butterflies, a starry sky, mountains, dense vegetation and the northern lights, to name only some. These motifs are the product of his dreams; the ambiguity between reality and virtual reality is accentuated by the red colour of the space.
Like artificial intelligence, aurèce vettier sees dreams as a kind of instant digestion of real data. From these dreams, he uses artificial intelligence to generate new forms that evoke his personal imagination. This journey through the forest is a reference to René Daumal’s unfinished work Le Mont Analogue [Mount Analogue] (1944), in which the author recounts looking for, discovering and then climbing a mountain that is home to previously unseen flora and fauna. For aurèce vettier, the forest is the starting point for the ascent of this mountain. Like a journey through life, going through it is like exploring a new world, marvelling at it and seeking harmony between oneself and one’s environment.”
photography by: Romain Darnaud






