Patrick Tresset - We Are Here and Now

"I am fascinated with the depiction of some aspects of human experience, which I believe have remained essentially unchanged since prehistoric times.

 In my work, I explore this theme using technology, a tool for achieving distance, control, and spontaneity.

 My passion for robotics and performative installations allows me to delve into micro-recurring storytelling and mise-en-scène." - Patrick Tresset, 2023

"We Are Here and Now" is an innovative exhibition that pushes the boundaries of contemporary art, challenging viewers to contemplate the essence of our being. Patrick Tresset's work invites the viewers to meaningful conversations about the human experience amidst the ever-evolving landscape of the Anthropocene. Tresset’s exhibition includes a combination of performative installations with a robot trio drawing a sitter, and another where a single machine continuously draws a still life of the vanitas theme, a video triptych, revisiting the Memento Mori subject, and a series of monochrome machine-assisted paintings depicting humans.

The creative process consists of a performance of portraiture created by a robot, which in turn requires the presence of people who become its models. Material components that live in symbiosis with a digital and technological immateriality, in turn, create a new product - a work of art on paper. The resulting drawings, created during the performance, were indeed put on paper by the machines, but the artist is the one who programmed and designed them. This reveals the hybrid nature of the artist united with his mechanical art. The drawings require close analysis. They show a clear homogeneity of the drawing style, although each robot concentrates on the sitter's varying features and perceives its presence differently. In one sitting with the trio, three different drawings are created - each robot thus possesses its own drawing style and carries out a portrait differently. Here, too, a feeling of autonomy of the robots is created. But one is mistaken because the robots, like the actors, act after the given script.

Thus, no questions arise about the actual creator of these drawings or about the creative process of making them, but rather one finds that everything is in an organic congruence and close relationship between the artist, robot, sitter, and drawing. One only examines the relationship created in the process. Patrick Tresset's installations, paintings, videos, and drawings invite viewers to reflect on their role in a rapidly changing world where technology continually reshapes our perception of existence. Patrick's practice can be considered in relation to French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist ideas and Bernard Stiegler's theories on the intimate relationship between humanity and technology.