"i art"

Artist statement Jacques Deshaies - Dsky
Thoughts collected by Natasha Deshaies

From abstract gestural to DNA actual

Comtemporary art history in the avant-garde field where the will of rupture prevail on the will of continuity may look like an enterprise of autodestruction. The negation of the extrinsic finality - a kantian legacy revise by the doctrinarian of art for art sake - found its accomplishment in his gestural neo-conceptual abstracts studies of feminine nude model and in his essays of the abstract form and ideas with a subject : genome. The voluntary abandonments associated with gestural abstract painting (absence of reference to a natural model ; rejection of intellectual meaning ; refusals of any usefullness) come from the autonomisation of the art process. Jacques Deshaies is now considering the handling of his means of expressions as the final value of his artistic activities. This art conception results in the consecration of the primacy of the imaginary on the image, and the form on the function. And when his artistic autonomisation was completed it is this conception of art that allowed him to reinvent himself as a DNA double helix artist and to return to the primary source of art : the rupestrian cave of Lascaux (France).


Artist life is his medium

Neo-rupestrian artist

30,000 years ago "artist-cave painters" were painting a body of work that was a fundamental issue for the daily survival of the human tribe : they were painting the image of more than a hundred animals to hunt for the survival of the clan. Today, just the images and the places have changed, Jacques Deshaies goes from deer to DNA double helix, from mammoth to protein, from cave walls to the covers of the biggest international science magazine : same artist - same message. Works of art for "itself" for the survival of the tribe.

"DNA Cave painting" serie - Série "ADN Néo-rupestre"

Modern artist

While diving in the fragmented deepness of the body "reality", he does not avoid the painting of the traditional figure. Same message : works of art for "itself" not for "himself". He reclaims painting as a critical gesture. He situates himself as a legitimate self-reflective art strategist. He is not repressing, he is expressing. He occupies a critical, rather than stylistic tradition of late modern art. He crosses a boundary that earlier generations of artists and critics considered inviolable : the similarity between abstract and representational painting (i.e. that they are both painting). Medium, narrative and verisimilitude now are less important than whether something is "significant art". He has his own Malevich black square - an abstract representation of painting basics conditions.

"Proteome" serie - Série "Protéome"

Post-modern artist

His wink to accomplice who understands the complexity of the different levels being offered. He uses a double-edge strategy typical of post-modern genre art : conceptual genome art versus neo-conceptual abstract nude feminine model freedom painting - in synchronicity.

Neo-conceptual artist

In that he extracts art from its own material and discursive convention. For years he has challenged art's distribution system and examined its nature through investigations that led into realms of knowledge and science. He is slyly equivocal and relativist to a fault. He has had nothing to do with, and is saddened by many conceptual artist turn to considerations of the artworks immediate reception trying to impress rather than reveal complex new knowledge. Now, in 2003, you have a version of conceptualism where spectacle takes procedure over, or stand in for, a conceptual proposition. We have reached an impasse. Jacques Deshaies, in synchronicity with his neo-conceptual gestual freedom painting with nude feminin models, coupled with his conceptual new-knowledge genome art, intends to bridge that gap.

Performances with nude models - Performances avec modèles nues

New-knowledge artist

In this case, to paint for "itself" our abstract reality that evolves continually : the human genome. The challenge is to invent a brand new aesthetical/ethical philosophy of this new-knowledge and apply it to art : that is what Jacques Deshaies does as artist.


Freedom painting

As for Dsky, Jacques Deshaies is his alter ego and has his own identity used for specific art action (act of art). So now he is using it only for nude model freedom performances. This allows him to live his normal life as Jacques Deshaies and also to invent/create an anti-hero, someone who has many faults, who has arrogant looks on humanity and view it with a certain contempt, who does not suffocate himself with sentiment. But then, he arts. What no artist has done before ; nude feminine model performances (with freedom drawings of each invitees afterwards, everyone blindfolded) stand essentially on the facts that christian-muslim-jewish education is based on anguish, fear, no confidence in human nature, scorn of the body, scorn of sexuality, and last but not least, scorn of women as human beings with a sex.

"Impossible Love" serie - Série "Amour impossible"


Your portrait

Although you might view your portrait as a documentation of the added moments of your own life, it is in fact about all of us. About how we are incarnated as bodies. Even though your elegant portrait do not represent us, it is us. This is one of the ways in which you touch us (others). What matters is to find a "quality for yourself", not a symbol or allegory of yourself, but a quality. Your portrait evokes the body, not because of any similarity of surface or form : rather because the tension between the formal - i.e. the body structure - and the hidden - i.e. the body substance - brings you out, the only you, the unique you.It is not strange to observe that the image you have of your own body, a scrappily assembled patchwork of glimpses from photographs and mirrors, finally has less substance than this "abstract portrait" painted by Jacques Deshaies, which in fact can be seen as a synthesis of the images that yourself and others have of you. It is a "photofit image", in other words, a reconstruted picture of yourself.Young or old, fat or thin, and always affected by the lost of grace, everybody has suffered. One is no longer responsible for it. In itself, by itself, your body when viewed by this artist is a work of art.

Portraits

 

 


Collector's collection

The act of collection and organized display of art is in itself an art form emerging from the "desire" to bring knowledge in a single space. Meaning is manipulated through the arrangements of the arts, which forms discourses between them. These manipulations are themselves often hierarchical, dictated by rarity or thematic significance. The lesser art positionally support the greater. For collectors, the aesthetic value of a certain art object could come from market value or purely personal interests. As the art reflects the spiritual, political and monetary power, as well as it reflects the attributes of its owner, they establish the owner's taste and authority.


The internet

The communicative aspects of this medium, the fact that informations dissiminated worldwide about artists activities and curatorial activities is creating an art of transparency. An art built not upon the myth of the lone genius supported by private collectors, but for the first time in history, an art independant of bias, whether institutional, economical, social, or spatial, an art that is finally subverting the market.


Art and science

The messenger

Jacques Deshaies emerges in a space where science and art fusion. The transfer of scientific insights to the field of art and then to the non-initiate is surely one of the most difficult exercise contemporary thinking as embarked on. The communication to others of science insights only works with the connection between information and message. Here the information comes from science and that message is translated and passed on by this artist, making him a messenger in his own neo-rupestrian way.

Covers of science magazines - Couvertures de magazines scientifiques

Why so difficult

Consider the contradictions and creative tensions between reason (science) and intuition (art), certainty (science) and uncertainty (art), deliberation (science) and spontaneity (art). So it is no secret that scientists have a particular way as a person trained in logical thinking. Then what science offers art is that most elusive quality of all ; the way that scientists think. The way they live in the world or what one might call the mind of science versus the mind of art. Science is about why, art is about why not. Two different worlds indeed.

The Box

Scientists and artists have different ways of thinking. For example, scientists struggle mightily to name a thing, they have distilled it and purified it, they have quantified it, they have put a box around the thing and said : "What is in the box is the thing and what is not in is not.". By contrast, artists tend to avoid naming things (their art). To name a thing precisely can destroy that delicate, participatory creative experience that happens when a good observer observes significant art. Every electron is the same (is it?). Every art is different.

Feedback

This artist, Jacques Deshaies, integrates science as part of the human drama, as part of the beauty and mystery of human experience. So, he, as an artist, can achieve harmony with they, the scientists. By actually being a scientists messenger to the world is one of the feedback this artist gives to science.

"Proteome" serie - Série "Protéome"

Aims

Given that Jacques Deshaies is at the forefront of thinking about art and the scientific product of genomic and proteomic, he teaches the importance of art in the service of science, he stimulates scientific awareness, he fosters debate about science, art and society. Jacques Deshaies as a visionary is rigorous in his commitment to art as a form of scientific discourse and social critic. He sets an example in terms of showing how three (3) dimentional scientific tought, research, theory and intellectual interrogation can be translated into 3 dimensionals art forms. His art is transformative, meaningfull and relevant.

Re-aim

This is an exercise in science/art communication. Jacques Deshaies has solid career credentials as well as a reputation as a street-smart 56 year old visionary doing cutting-edge, science-based, neo-conceptually driven art. The aim is to share the blessings of science and art universally.

To art or not to art, the only question…

Artist, "go genome" !