Darwinian artist

Matthieu Faury has always been fascinated by the origins of living things and by the history of humanity. That is why the aim of his approach is to show the deep and original nature of it.

By combining scientific, historical and philosophical researches and references, he explores the boundaries that the Western culture poses between human beings and the animal, between civilization and primitive life.

How does a human being define himself, how does he see himself, both as a member of a species and as an individual?

The theme of evolution, in the Darwinian sense of the term, is at the core of the Artist's work. The kinship between animals and humans, and the blurring of the biological boundaries that separate them, can be seen with irony or emotion in many sculptures and drawings. The great apes are a recurring theme because their morphology, their behavior, their humanity, fascinate. They question our own identity, a mixture of proclaimed humanity and repressed animal life, as well as the collective responsibility of humans in the countless attacks on biodiversity.

Portraits of transgender men and women, mutant objects and organic architectures illustrate the Artist's reflections on the limits of our condition and on the ambivalence of being in the age of biotechnology and contemporary societies.

Inspired by both popular culture and classical culture, history and current issues, constantly questioning the relationship that humans have with themselves, his research naturally led him to work on the place that the human species has granted itself within or outside of nature.

Thus, the concepts of Anthropocene, anthropocentrism and speciesism have found their place at the heart of his latest work.

He shows how humans, feeling "masters and possessors of nature" according to the formula of Rene Descartes, have come to exhaust the planet, to saturate it with waste, to asphyxiate its atmosphere and its oceans, and doing so to provoke what scientists call the end of the Holocene and the sixth mass extinction.

The process becomes political, deeply rooted in our time, questioning the foundations and the future of our life together, of our cities, of our planet.

Finally, this multitude of questions and doubts, which are invitations to a deep reflection on the role of Art and the responsibility of the Artist in the light of the urgency of ecological issues, led him to integrate into his artistic practice some attitudes, mediums and materials consistent with the challenges of our time. In the manner of a 21st century Artist.