Gilles Guias, the virtual drive
In his works on e-paper, Gilles Guias transposes the art of intaglio, ancient technique in this virtual universe which characterizes the beginning of our XXI e century.
formal Parents are indeed many among the screen-reader e-paper and a engraving burin or drypoint. First, the dialectic black-white common to both techniques, in incisive strokes, inflexible, distanced through the tool and the resistance of the metal or the graphics palette. The spontaneity that characterizes the design or lithography is here contained and curbed by exercising slowly mastered a technique and a material that resists and thwarts the natural fluidity of gesture. The format then reduced, almost precious, highlighted by large margins in reserves, making these two types of artifacts objects slow relish, savor the atmosphere a curio cabinet, as opposed to sounding cymas our museums show organizers. The notion of state finally renewed by e-paper. A single substrate can view, in minutes, the successive stages of thought and gesture of the artist, which for the antique lover prints, could be the quest of a lifetime.
In 1935, Walter Benjamin, in his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, noted the loss of will of the artwork as a result of the advent of techniques and means of mass reproduction that are printing, photography and film. Seventy years later, Gilles Guias relies on means of distribution and reproduction of mass to restore the piece to its original vibration, prompting an almost mystical communication, like icons of Orthodox churches. The multiplication is no longer here, a synonym of disembodiment and loss of autonomy, but vector affirmation of a very physical identity.
Louis Doucet , December 2008
