Stéphane Sautour — À propos — Slash Paris

Stéphane Sautour is interested in man’s relation to the universe, in our intellectual, technological and scientific environment. Strongly influenced by systemic thought, he has built his body for work in the form of a rhizome. His first pieces are hi-tech, design pieces about artificial intelligence and the two-way traffic between humanisation and robotisation. In 2001 he made “Go”, a computerised version of the game of strategy in which the viewers themselves become the pawns, and also “Tank”, a CD-ROM designed to generated job applications. “Fight club”, 2002, in which two Sony AIBO robot dogs were programmed to fight, is emblematic of his approach. The situation is clearly absurd and grotesque, and yet viewers can’t help projecting their own interpretations and feelings. In the most recent works, which display undeniable virtuosity, the imaginary dimension is more powerful. “Idoru”, 2007, a marquetry replica of the Northtrop B-2 Spirit, the famous American stealth bomber, soars up from the ground, seeming to threaten the viewer like a bird of prey. The same title also covers four series of small watercolours, fourty-eight pieces in all. They constitute the fragmentary sequences from a science fiction scenario waiting to be constructed. Sautour’s critical work invokes a multitude of references from culture (art, cinema and literature) and science, all contributing to the complex and ambivalent construction of the perception of a new technological reality and of an environment that is constantly changing.