Frédéric Naud
French Contemporary Sculptor
Human engineering is just a natural organic process.
Carbon Rock Genesis, film realized in collaboration with :
- Fred Naud (Script / Storyboard / Black paint)
- César Audebert (Script / Storyboard / Drawings)
- Vincent Fribault (Editing / Soundtrack)
- Gildas Paré (Shooting / Retouching)
Bridge between Art & Sciences
Denis MICHEL
Doctor of Sedimentology
Four billion years ago, life on Earth kicked off its long journey. The type of environment where life appeared and the mechanisms behind its emergence remain unknown.
At first, life remained unicellular, then became multicellular, until the Cambrian explosion. From this “zoological Big Bang” that occurred a mere 540 million years ago, there emerged about thirty body plans, or phyla, from which all animal species are derived through the course of biological evolution.
Human beings – an accident of nature, stateless in biodiversity , organisms that are relatively powerful and potentially emancipated – nonetheless remain unfailingly subject to natural mechanisms. We currently are the playthings of a technological evolution where the inner workings have a natural essence, like those of biological evolution.
Artists have the ability to draw inspiration from the countless layers of the past that constitute us all, thus allowing us to see such imaginary spaces through their creations.
Fred Naud is manifestly fascinated by the ever changing story of life on our planet. That is why he chooses carbon, the fundamental ingredient of living things, as the basis of several of his works while combining them with other factors necessary for life: light, water and heat.
From the laboratory of this visionary artist emerge dazzlingly meaningful works, such as his emblematic pedestal table featuring the primordial “soup” – a theoretical setting that once was the darling of scientists, and today still serves as a metaphor in our minds. The inventiveness of this brilliant architect of new worlds is resolutely infinite, like that of living processes and the human spirit.
Discover the testimonies of exhibition visitors
The artist and his Art
CARBON ROCK PROJECT
Carbon Rock is mineralization in the form of a rock, the human ecological concept of “carbon emissions”. We evaluate our impact on the world around us by continuously measuring our carbon emissions. Like accountants, we itemize how many kilograms of carbon are emitted for each action that constitutes the life of a human being, leading to our own demise. This material, amassed over millennia, becomes the habitat and the body of tomorrow’s species.
With the presentation of neo-organisms via the Carbon Rock project, these tons of carbon take on visible, concrete forms. The raw materials of a creative process, these masses of carbon are embodied as surrealist — sometimes even functional — sculptures.
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
The Neo-organisms
An artistic and modern adventure beyond a million years of evolution after us.
After us, the neo-organisms
What if this quantity of carbon that we produce, and the traces of our passage on Earth, became the fertile ground of new life forms — new species ? And what if this deep, dark element that seems to be leading us to our extinction were to become a luminous source of life ?
What will spring forth from our ashes ?
ARTIST'S PORTRAIT
"I love the idea of changing the audience’s scale of time, to put a different read on their everyday lives."
Fred Naud has been an artist for the past twenty years, he is an autodidact who draws inspiration from past and present artists likes Van Gogh, Gauguin, Gaudi and Soulages.
Charles Darwin’s evolutionary vision of life influences Naud’s work, which takes a positive view of the future: What if other species could arise from the carbon that humanity leaves behind? Through works that appear surrealistic, Carbon Rock Project is an invitation to discover a poetic representation of a carbon-rich world to come: The neo-organisms.
by Solène BOURSIER, Cultural mediator
The Neo-organisms
Sign up and get invitations
Don’t hesitate to subscribe to the invitation list for upcoming openings. Receive all the information about my next exhibitions