Pierre Unal-Brunet was born in 1993 in France and lives between Paris and Sète. He collects inert materials, debris, and other surpluses of the world from aqueous harvesting areas. He assembles them to form object-beings in installations combining paintings, sculptures, and ink drawings. With an approach to evolution that borders on cryptozoology, his research draws on scientific articles from ichthyology (the study of fish) and marine biology, as well as on fantasies about these harvesting grounds. The result is a science-fictional environment inhabited by composite bodies.
With some thirty works created over the past five years, Prodrome is Pierre Unal-Brunet’s biggest solo exhibition to date. For MO.CO. Panacée, the artist is expanding his body of work, with the aim of altering how it is perceived and playing with the ways in which it is presented, thus allowing older species to surface in a new ecosystem..
The notion of eutrophication looms large in this complex and diffuse narrative. Eutrophication is the imbalance in aquatic environments caused by the increased presence of nitrogen and phosphorus. It is characterised by the growth of living organisms due to an excessive availability of nutrients. This excessive accumulation of biomass gradually saturates the ecosystem. Paradoxically, hyperfertilisation leads to the impoverishment and then the death of the biotope, which no longer disposes of the oxygen it needs to live. This phenomenon is also called the “asphyxiation of aquatic ecosystems.” A sort of bio-orgy prefacing extinction.
The exhibition follows this idea of gradual hypersaturation. In a spiral-like stroll through five chapters, each room is marked by a particular colorimetry, like a signal about the state of health of each of the biotopes visited. In this introspective narrative, punctuated by the poem Prodrome written by the artist, we move from crystalline calm to acid exuberance.
In an ever-changing system, Prodrome takes a speculative look at the evolution of species, imagining the unknown based on known clues.
Beyond our emotional relationship with ecological phenomena, the exhibition invites us to shift our self-centred gaze. In this way, Prodrome draws out the possibilities of co-evolution, thanks to the ambivalence of empathy—often selective—from antidote to harmfulness, or regeneration after decline.
Curator of Art & Science season : Pauline Faure, Anya Harrison, Alexis Loisel-Montambaux, Deniz Yoruc.
