Frédéric Naud

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.