Obvious is a French collective of artists and researchers who use algorithms to create art. Their work focuses on the new tools available in the field of artificial intelligence and how they can be used for artistic purposes, playing with the uncertainty inherent in new technologies and proposing diverted applications that go further than a simple request to existing data. Pioneers of digital art, they are also the first French artists to have created NFTs as early as 2018 with the piece Eryn Nemesis. Their works fall at the crossroads of science, history and art.
Whereas their predecessors used brushes, charcoal, hammers or chisels, Obvious shapes their works using computer tools that they adapt to their research object. Each of their works is the result of a long research and a repeated dialogue with the machine. A to-and-fro process and interaction with algorithms that, after a detour through the digital world and the production of AI-generated artworks and NFTs, ultimately returns to the physical world with the creation of hand-made artworks (paintings, prints, objects). In a reference to this creative process associating man with the machine, the collective has chosen to sign its works with the mathematical formula of the algorithms it uses.
Beyond this unique exploration of the man-machine creation language, two key elements characterize Obvious' approach: on the one hand, the will to seize art history as a material to be used and reinterpreted, whether it be classical portraiture (Belamy's Family series, 2018), Japanese prints (Electric Dreams of Ukyo series, 2019) or African masks (Facets of AGI series, 2020); on the other hand, the specific care given to the construction of highly documented and often sophisticated fictional contexts, which will serve as backgrounds for each of their series.
Obvious' works are conceptual propositions that must therefore be understood beyond their purely visual dimension, as part of an overall experimental working process and as components of a wider fiction in which each piece has its own specific place.
In 2022, Obvious delivered its interpretation of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, human achievements that still haunt our collective unconscious today even though most of them, with the exception of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, have not survived the passing of time. All that remains of these wonders are historical texts written by geographers, historians and writers, a fertile ground that has fostered the imagination of many artists and illustrators and gives Obvious the opportunity to engage in a dialogue with the classical artists who preceded them in the treatment of this theme.
Obvious is a French collective of artists and researchers composed of Hugo Caselles-Dupré (1993), Pierre Fautrel (1993) and Gauthier Vernier (1993). Their work has been presented in numerous institutions: National Art Museum of China (Beijing, 2019), King Fahd Cultural Centre (Ryad, 2019), Hermitage Museum (Saint Petersburg, 2019), Haus der Kunst (Munich, 2020), Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie (Paris, 2021), Rencontres d'Arles (Arles, 2022) or K11 Art Museum (Hong Kong, 2022). Their works can also be found in many private collections. They live and work in Paris.