SALLE DES ACTES

Work in progress (State commission)

Antoine Verdier - Salle des actes - detail - work in progress - Oil on canvas
Antoine Verdier - Salle des actes - detail - work in progress - Oil on canvas
Antoine Verdier - Salle des actes - detail - work in progress - Oil on canvas
Antoine Verdier - Posthumana Vanitas #1 - Panel 3 - Oil on canvas

SPRING

Antoine Verdier - Spring - Oil on canvas - 120 x 80 cm
Antoine Verdier - Spring - Oil on canvas - détail

POSTHUMANA VANITAS #1

Triptych

Antoine Verdier - Posthumana Vanitas #1 - Panel 1 - Oil on canvas
Antoine Verdier - Posthumana Vanitas #1 - Panel 2 - Oil on canvas
Antoine Verdier - Posthumana Vanitas #1 - Panel 3 - Oil on canvas

POSTHUMANA VANITAS #2

Series

Antoine Verdier - Posthumana Vanitas #2 - Panel 1 - Oil on canvas
Antoine Verdier - Posthumana Vanitas #2 - Panel 2 - Oil on canvas
Antoine Verdier - Posthumana Vanitas #2 - Panel 3 - Oil on canvas

STUDIES

Posthumana vanitas #2

Antoine Verdier - Study Posthumana Vanitas #2 - Panel 1
Antoine Verdier - Study Posthumana Vanitas #2 - Panel 2
Antoine Verdier - Study Posthumana Vanitas #2 - Panel 3

STUDIES

The danses macabres series

Antoine Verdier - Danse macabre 4
Antoine Verdier - Danse macabre 5
Antoine Verdier - Danse macabre 6
Antoine Verdier - Danse macabre 7

STUDY

Spring

Study - Spring
study - Spring - détail

My art strives to express overwhelming contemporary anxiety that humanity risks obliteration by the enormous wave of modern technology. Consequently my work represents the end of the human race and the advent of the robotic ‘post-human’ – the passing of one world to another.

Hybridization is an important theme in my work: hybridization of the body, but also of artistic techniques.

The technological boom is at one and the same time the source of our anxiety, but also source of hope for a better and longer life. I am intrigued by our fear/fascination attitude towards modern technologies that we perceive as both destructive and salvatory and this has led me to be inspired by images of the Apocalypse and the resurrection of Christ. My use of the triptych format is knowingly borrowed from religious art.

The media of oil painting, charcoal drawing and (academic) anatomical drawing are rooted in the Renaissance and classical art of the 19th century.

By using these techniques, I claim affiliation with the great historical cycles & the grand schools of painting that majestically represent the history of mankind and its conquests. However my work depicts bodies that are martyred, distorted, put under enormous strain and subject to passions and frenzy. I present the destruction of the body to lay bare the destruction of a species.

I choose to work with media that are technically challenging and time consuming in execution. But this effort and solemnity are a necessarily integral part of my work: ​​they make me feel that what I paint or draw has an important sense in understanding this crucial phase for the future of humanity.

Antoine VERDIER

Lives and works in Paris France

Antoine Verdier was born in 1986. He is an Associate Professor (maître de conférences ) in the fine arts at the Université Paul-Valéry in Montpellier, France. His own artistic work focuses on the dynamic between the biology of human beings versus the technology of avatars, and he explores the futuristic idea of the “posthuman” body. His artistic method, based on traditional techniques, reinterprets the ideal of the human body in a critical dimension and his compositions depict scenes of human-machine hybrid creatures.

Credentials

  • 2020, CCU exhibition / CCU department of Fine Arts gallery – Taipei, Taiwan
  • 2017, Works on paper / AFA gallery-Soho – New York, United States
  • 2016, Rencontre / Xingyi Art Museum – Chengdu, China
  • 2010, Annigoni’s Legacy / Villa Bardini, Museo Nazionale – Florence, Italy
  • 2009, Student exhibition / AAA, Palazzo Pecori Giraldi – Florence, Italy

Antoine Verdier
14 rue jean jacques rousseau
75001 Paris