David GUMBS

David GUMBSMultimédia Artist

Nationality : FrenchSpoken languages : English, FrenchAge : 37

Selected Group Shows

Video Islands, New York 2015 (curator : Maria Elena Ortiz)

Trinidad+Tobego Film Festival – New Medias, Trinidad & Tobego 2014

Reflexions, 14°N61°W Contemporary Art space, Martinique 2014

Transformining Spaces, Bahamas 2014 (curator : Holly Bynoe & Nicole Smythe-Johnson)

Beep Bop Boop New Media, Florida 2014 (curator : Leah Brown & Peter Symons)

BIAC Martinique 2013, Flux, Martinique 2013(curator : Holly Bynoe)

Art Bémao, édition spéciale Arts Numériques, Guadeloupe 2013(curator : Jean-Marc Hunt)

Périféeriques 3, Jacmel Haïti 2013 (curator : Giscard Bouchotte)

Dwet Fey Sevi, Terra Festival, Guadeloupe 2013

Hey you what do you see ?, Saint-Martin 2012

Happy Island Project, Aruba 2012(curator : Jose Manuel Noceda)

Caraïbe en Expansion, CCR Fonds St jacques, Martinique 2011(curator : Jose Manuel Noceda

Latitudes 2009, Paris City Hall 2009(curator : Régine Cuzin)

Entre-Vues, Photographie contemporaine en Caraïbe, Martinique 2009

L’installation “L’herbe, un Paysage interstitiel”, Le Fresnoy 2008

Festival Croisées d’artistes, Ile-de-France 2007

Festival Variations caraïbes, Paris 2006

Festival Arborescence, Aix en provence 2005

“Paysage envisagé”, Espace Landowski, Paris 2004

“Internet à la loupe”, FRED FOREST, Fête de l’Internet 2004

“Paysage envisagé”, Cité des sciences et de l’industrie de la Vilette, Paris 2003.

Panorama 4, Paysages persistants, Le Fresnoy, Lille 2003

Solo Shows

Hors-champ, 14°N61°W Contemporary Art space, Martinique

Somewhere in Paradise, Haïti 2013 - (curator : Giscard Bouchotte)

Workshops

Multimedia Master Class : Orléans’s Visual arts school, Fort-de-France Visual arts school, Versailles University

Teaching and Lectures

Fort-de-France Visual Arts School from 2009Teaching : Multimédia, Médias Multiples, Motion Design

Versailles St Quentin en Yvelines University, 2006Teaching : infographie & multimédia, Master 2 section

City of Orleans’s Visual Arts School, 2005/06Teaching : multimédia, 3rd, 4th, 5th year students

Art Residencies

La Saline Royale, Arc et Senan 2009

Les Beau-arts de Besançon, Besançon 2009

L’avant-Rue, Paris 2007

La Cité des Sciences et de l’industrie, Paris 2004

Performances

Colloque Poétique de la Révolte Albert Camus Aimé Césaire. Performance Vidéo Live, Atrium, Fort-de-France 2013

Performance veillée Edouard Glissant, Beaux-arts de Fort-de-France, 2011

Body Painting, Galerie The Shore, St-Martin 2010

Prizes

Photographies de l’inconscient - www.ncident.net - 2004Casse pas ta vie, 1st place - Regional poster contest for road accident prevention, 1996.

Grants

Aide Individuelle à la création, DAC Martinique, 2011

Aide Individuelle à la création, DAC Guadeloupe, 2013

Aide Individuelle à l’installation, DAC Guadeloupe, 2012

Artist statement

David Gumbs’s artistic approach is based on a famous quotation from XVII th century French philosopher and chemist Antoine Lavoisier : « Mass is neither gained nor lost, merely transformed ». Thus, life’s cycle, infinite scale, memory, and the Sacred, are themes that emerge from larger topics of interest such as inner/outer landscape, and offscreen. Concepts close to Chris Marker’s « In Memory », Ernest Pignon Ernest’s « Aborigines », Desiree Dolron « Sacred Conversation » and Karl Blossfeldt life’s work.

David Gumbs’s painting and drawing universes are shaped from thousand of interlaced lines. These immersed spaces reveal personal inner projections from the unconscious. This process is the result of an automatic drawing act. Which is sometimes the witness of a runoff discharge. The interlaced texture created with and without colour, plays an interactive rhizome plot of each visitor’s unconsciousness.

His polyvalent approach (drawing, painting, photography, new media, interactive video) questions the « Offscreen » of the perception, as a scanner of his « Mental Archeology ». His research indeed focuses on the « stock of souvenirs » that builds memory. David’s new media and photography works try to reveal these anthropo-morphic and anthropologic memories.

The digital arts produced take an interest in societal context of inner representation. Originated from Edouard Glissant’s « créolité » in the « Tout monde », from social and architectural heritage, from the lush fauna and flora of the Caribbean. These new media works are vectors of fairy tale legends of the night, of mystical trees and animist ceremonies. This Island cultural context fosters the creation of new realtime 3D au-diovisual representations, new realm of imagination inspired both by the ancestral rhythms from the African continent, and also influenced by the french « Musique Conrete », and Noise from Berlin’s underground life.

Publications

Frieze Magazine, Island Life - Contemporary art in the Caribbean - Dan Fox, n°192

ARC, Art, Recognition, Culture - Issue 03 July 2011

Le Monde Hors-série «Où en est la France d’outremer», 2009

SVM Mac, Mars 2002

Education

New Media Master Specialisation, Les Ateliers/ENSCI, Paris 2002

DNSEP Art, 2001

DNAP Art, 1999

Internet Links> Artist portfolio :

www.davidgumbs.com

> Artist experimental platforms : www.artchipel.orgwww.cytoplasme.com

> Artist blog : davidgumbs.tumblr.com

Offscreen series - Realtime 3D interactive video - Work in Progress

«Are offscreen all things, all ideas that we do not see, or we do not think of.. In-deed, it is mainly the concept more or less hidden from the stock which is the off-screen and produces a huge impact on the vision: the invisible invasion of the feld by which cannot be found only in the form of occultation or absence.» Le Traité du regard, Alain Beltzung, Revue Question de, n°112 – Albin Michel.

In continuation of the series of photographs « Ecorc(é) » This refection explores the medium of interactive 3D and real-time video, characteristic notion of spe-cifc interactive digital arts. Through this process, without falling into the trap of illustration, David Gumbs explores microscopic fragments of tropical fora to borrow new aesthetics, new hypnotic, subliminal and hybrid landscapes. These explorations question the perception, the notion of scale, the detail that draw from memory. The universes generated, create attempts to unconscious accesses, to the viewer’s hidden imagination by vibration through the construc-tion and deconstruction of the image.

Still according to Alain Beltzung «Representing things is the basis of our cerebral. Not only any memory is representation, but also any kind of thinking as well be-cause we fgure out what we want to comprehend. An action to be taken is frst sub-jected to an estimate: we represent it using borrowed memory elements to make a choice according to acceptable or unacceptable aspect of this representation.»

The patterns gathered in nature, the minerals, the objects collected on the coasts of the islands of the Caribbean, scroll as a key revelation of inner universes. Indeed, the work generated in real time deceive the eye by creating both a sense of familiarity and a disturbing repetition that sometimes reminds of microscopic creatures, crawling, rolling, and as well as some fractal architectures.

Moreover, the symmetry of certain events can be interpreted as a Rorschach test (a clinical tool for assessing psychological projective developed by psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach and psychaliste 1921). Snapshots taken from real-time video hint architectures imagination. From this symmetry also springs constitution inherent to Life, to Nature. Nature is repetition, symmetry and asymmetry, mi-croscopic and macroscopic. Nature is harmony.

Offscreen series - Realtime 3D interactive video - Work in Progress

Offscreen video installation

24 min - 800 cm x 240 cm

14°N61°W Contemporary Art Space

Martinique 2014

Offscreen - Light Box Series - 14°N61°W Contemporary Art Space, Martinique 2014

Offscreen series Led sculptures40 cm x 30 cm

14°N61°W Contemporary Art Space

Martinique 2014

New SpeciesRealtime 3D interactive video

Reflexions show14°N61°W Art Contemporary Space

Soleil Magma - Realtime interactive video - BIAC Martinique 2013 Indicible Camouflage - Realtime interactive video - Trinidad+Tobego Film Festival 14

Video Creation - Principe de Précaution 2014

Commissionned by Myriam Soulanges - Marlène Myrtil - Biennale Dansité 2014

Video Creation - Miles & ses Danses de Mauvais NègresContemporary Dance show

Commissionned byCie Christiane Emmanuel - Biennale Dansité 2014

VDO 1.0Interactive video installation + In-situ wall drawing

Emergences, Latitudes 2009, Installation Dessin Mural Insitu + Photographies

Hotel de Ville de Paris - 900cm x 300cm

The Rising. 800cm x 500cm Festival Croisée d’artistes 2007

Série Ecor(é) - Photographie Numérique & ArgentiqueDimension variable

Magma, Peinture Numérique Dimension Variable