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Antoine Granier

From Saturday 1 June to Tuesday 3 September 2024

Experiencing the art of Antoine Granier amounts to accepting to enter a somewhat old-fashioned freak show that seems rather timeless and does not correspond to the aesthetics of the day. This is surely due to Granier’s attraction to the circus world and “turn-of-the-century” [1] fairgrounds, which enable him to distance us from the ultra-connected contemporary world, with its temporality compressed by technology and in high definition. However, whether for his feature-length or short films, sculptures, performances or installations, Antoine Granier’s work is permeated by these ever-fascinating atmospheres, to deal sincerely with contemporary topics directly affecting him, such as the incorporation of technology through the figure of the cyborg, the pressure of capitalism on invisibilised bodies or the current porosity of the concept of nature.
 
Antoine Granier likes to seek inspiration from proto-filmmaker Georges Méliès and illusionist techniques to create atmospheres in which grotesque DIY special effects contribute an element of surrealistic uncanny. The machines shown in his works revisit their original simplicity of operation, notably through that which is most organic about them: their brightly lit buttons, light bulbs and the transparency of their mechanisms. Antoine Granier’s art leads us into a world in which machines and magic stem from the same desire, that of communicating with the beyond, predicting the future – like the fortune-teller automatons that inspired the artist to create his mechanical and luminous sculpture-boxes, spitting out poems written by the artist, once activated by the viewer. His sets and boxes also evoke the enclosure and constraint of bodies within the normative spaces of techno-capital. Representations of dystopian cities appears here and there, like the ones imagined in the modern period, filled with skyscrapers, in which the dominant occupy the upper spheres while the workforce find themselves below, rendering the social edifice fragile and trembling at the slightest rumbling from its base.
 
In Antoine Granier’s world, nature and technology are not antinomic: he cultivates hybridity in his machine-plants with a human face, like grotesque eco-cyborgs attempting to adapt to an imminent environmental disaster. Metamorphosis as a solution to the multiple crises currently keeping the collective imaginary in a stalemate, thus emerge as a necessary good for the artist, for whom each artwork resists the prevailing political rigidity and gate-keeping. In residence at the Lindre-Basse studio, where time stands still and space expands, the artist is soaking up the landscape with its many wind turbines and devising monumental makeshift installations that are part-fountain, part-wind turbine, which he will activate in the surrounding hills. Created from wood and objects found in the area, they will bear the trace of bodies that have used these materials (sheets, shoes, clothing, bicycle wheels, etc.) and thus form a local portrait, once again hybridising technology, bodies and natural resources.
 
 
 
 
[1]  Translator’s note: Fin de siècle typically refers to the late nineteenth century.
 
 
 
 
 
The artist residency programme is organised by the CAC - la synagogue de Delme in collaboration with the Lorraine Regional Natural Park and the village of Lindre-Basse.
 

  

 

 

Antoine Granier was born in Paris in 1993 and currently lives between France and Mexico.
He studied at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, then spent a semester on exchange at CalArts in Los Angeles, before graduating from Le Fresnoy - Studio National des arts contemporains in 2020. He alternates between plastic art, sculptures, installations and videos, and working in the film industry as a director, and sometimes as a set or costume designer, with these different practices intertwining and feeding off each other. His work has been shown in venues such as the Micro-Onde in Vélizy, the Grande Halle de la Villette, the Salon de Montrouge, 6b and Glassbox, and his films have been screened at festivals such as Côté-Court in Pantin and Queer Lisboa. He currently lives between France and Mexico City, where he recently presented his work at Salon Acme and Clavo Movimiento.