Ugo Arsac
Digital and plastic artist
April-May 2023 / September-October 2023
- New Media
- New York
“My artistic approach straddles the boundary between anthropology, research, and documentary-making. As an artist, I enjoy discovering new means of expression, materials, and technologies to support my concepts.”
There is always an analytical, exploratory dimension to my work, with an aim to shed light on a place, practice, or person. My artistic approach straddles the boundary between anthropology, research, and documentary-making. As an artist, I enjoy discovering new means of expression, materials, and technologies to support my concepts.
In recent years, I have been particularly interested in urban underground spaces. From them, I have drawn correlations between the human body and urban infrastructure, comparing, for instance, their fluids, arteries, appendages, nerves, veins, organs, uteri, and synapses with tunnels, tubes, cables, ducts, circuit breakers, doors, plates, ladders, walls, and rails.
Beyond artistic conception, I seek first and foremost to experience powerful moments that allow me to break free from the ordinary. My subterranean expeditions have led me to question the order of our everyday lives above the asphalt. I can no longer flick a switch or turn on a faucet without having some awareness of the network being activated beneath my feet. I have also worked with individuals both young and old, who – whether aged sixteen or sixty – owe their knowledge not to age but to experience.
However, before I present something to be viewed or experienced by the public, I need to change my own perception of the world by placing myself in territories that are still largely unknown to me.
Ugo Arsac is a digital and plastic artist. He is based in Marseille, France. He completed his studies at the Beaux-Arts and Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and then at Le Fresnoy National Studio for Contemporary Arts. He produces films, installations, and immersive experiences that bring together the urban and the human, mythology, and anthropology. He has been awarded the Émergences Prize (Scam) and the Prix des Amis du Fresnoy. His work was recently shown at the Chronique – Biennale of Digital Imagination, Ososphère, and DDessin, among others. His latest creation, IN-URBE, is now part of the Espace Multimédia Gantner collection.
In partnership with
Seconde Nature & ZINC – Biennale Chroniques
ZINC and Seconde Nature, two key actors in Digital Arts on the Aix-Marsielle territory, joined together in 2018, to launch Chroniques, a biennial international event dedicated to the arts and digital culture in southern France. This artistic and cultural event of international importance in the digital field in the Aix-Marseille metropolis, consists of exhibitions, artworks in public spaces, shows, concerts, time for digital mediation, seminars, and practical workshops.
