The work of Hugo Servanin revolves around the creation of sculptures that the artist calls Géants [Giants]: hybrid beings that are first moulded on human bodies and then assembled with an array of synthetic materials. Referencing the aesthetics of classical sculpture – busts or naked bodies displayed on plinths – Servanin’s Géants express the visceral, fragile and ephemeral nature of human bodies. These characteristics are conveyed through the minute study of the bodies’ armatures and an empirical approach of materials. Once his sculptures are shaped, Servanin composes immersive installations in which, using a wide range of advanced technologies and artificial intelligence, he recreates the conditions of organic life. Acting like a scientist in his laboratory, Servanin is constantly inventing new methods to animate his sculptures; for instance, by using humidification/evaporation procedures which progressively modify their shape and surface colour, heat monitoring incubators that crackle their epidermis, ventilators that make them breathe, or complex mechanical systems distributing their body fluids. By bridging traditions of ‘good form’ with cutting-edge technologies, Servanin composes alternative environments through which he critically analyses the success and failure of the cornucopian civilization we live in.
Hugo Servanin (b. 1994, France) lives and works in Paris, FR. Selected solo exhibitions include Morphose, Magasins généraux, Pantin, FR; Liste Art Fair Basel, with NıCOLETTı (2023); Regime Selecting Devices (Environnement Foule #6), NıCOLETTı, London (2021), and CACOTOPIA 02, Annka Kultys Gallery, London, UK (2018).
Selected group exhibitions include Reminder: Version Update Available, Magician Space, Beijing, China (2024); The First Stone, Galerie Poggi, Paris, FR (2023); malléable, aléatoire, curated by Chloé Bonnie More, Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Paris, FR (2023); Ways of Being:A Human Dissected, Reinterpreted, and Reconstructed, curated by Jacquill G. Basdew, De School, Amsterdam, NL (2023); DAWA, curated by Latif Samassi, 3537, Paris, FR (2023); Bureau d’investigation du sacré, Les Grandes-Serres de Pantin, FR (2022); Deus ex Machina, Musée de Soissons, FR (2021); Faut-il une raison ?, Les Grandes-Serres de Pantin, FR (2021); Faire corps, Paris Beijing Galerie, Paris, FR (2020); Spaced In Lost, Paris, FR (2020); Form and Volume, Cristina Guerra, Lisbon, PT (2019); Futures of Love, Magasins généraux, Pantin, FR (2019); Notte Bianca, Villa Médicis, Rome, IT (2019); Maison d’histoire(s) (non) naturelle(s), NıCOLETTı, Paris, FR (2019); Artagon Live, Cité internationale des arts, Paris, FR (2019); Point Contemporain, Villa Belleville, Paris, FR (2019); Le Hurlement du papillon, Double Séjour, Paris, FR (2018); Dictionary of Rhymes, MI Galerie, Paris, FR (2018).
