1-0-1 by Jean-Jacques Gay

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He is neither painter, nor sculptor, nor computer scientist, nor multimedia artist, but Miguel Chevalier is an artist who endeavours against the fundamental contradictions of our world......a world which is simultaneously trying to move forwards into the future while stubbornly trying to remain in the past. During the 80s, he was a student of the fine arts, graduating with a degree from the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Paris. Miguel has also studied Industrial Design, Art and Archeology. The influence of all of these subjects can easily be seen in his work. Miguel Chevalier did not remain a simple painter for very long. It seemed obvious that the end of the century was now seeking new means and methods of artistic expression and, beginning in the mid 80s, a series of new inventions and technological developments opened the gateway to untold new realms of digital technology. This is a new world of dreams and vision from which artists cannot be excluded, and in which Miguel Chevalier and many others are hurriedly trying to outdo their predecessors.
In the past ten years, we have moved from two-dimensional video to 3D. Modern technology and computers have been an integral part of Chevalier's daily life. This French artist does not focus his work on the production of images- He does not create new images, but instead, recycles them. From his point of view, society and the media already generate enough images as it is, making it so much the better to recycle them and morph them into stylish High Tech icons.

And yet, if he appears to denounce the "mass production" of images, Miguel Chevalier has produced an out-and-out formalism and fell into the trap of decorative aestheticism. Even as if his work on the latest image reproduction systems took on a novel kind of opulence, it was not until some years later that the work of Miguel Chevalier got tripped up in the technological formalism that he wished to denounce.

It is from his computer, and through his association with computer scientist Eric Wenger, that Miguel Chevalier came to ponder three new numerical problems: (1) the structure of a computer image and what it's actually made of, (2) the mass-reproduction of images posted on the Web, and (3) the multiple facets of real-time images and hyper-text surfing.
Fascinated by the problems advanced by Walter Benjamin on the subject of the mechanical arts, and their ability to be reproduced, Miguel Chevalier's passion involves reproductions and electronic manipulation, convinced that "digital hegemony" results from the reproducibility of systems and images. Thanks to the appearance of cheap yet sophisticated printers, and the development of the Internet, it is now universally accessible to print out and collect works of art posted on the web. Each work thus becomes a simple mechanical copy, identical and yet different from all others by way of different combinations of ink, printers and paper, and thus a unique piece in itself, despite its mechanical origin. And continuing on with this idea, Miguel Chevalier hypothesizes that if each image has a numerical code representing it, (successive strings of binary code using 0 and 1) then this numerical code, equally as important as the images that they represent, can be "seen" through a graphical sequence of 0 and 1.
From this idea we move on to envisioning a programme which will actually allow users to really get inside of it . Through a succession of binary images the visitor has but one single step. And why not make it so that the "visitor" becomes one of the elements of the piece? This until coming up with the fact that the audience can, and indeed must, have an effect on the random transformations (navigations) of the programme. It is this method that led to (starting in 1996) "Turbulences numériques" and "Natures liquides".
The primary idea behind these recent pieces, conceived and put together by Miguel Chevalier, is that program users can now have an effect on the images he is looking at, simply by moving the mouse. The very actions of the user can now make changes which will become an integral part of the work, now made up of the fascinating and constantly changing series of "stains". Each visitor can personally interact with this video-projected living, moving image. The project has just been successfully put online on The Havas Site (http://www.havas.fr). The viewer participates in the work of Miguel Chevalier on the Net, on CD-ROM, as if he were in the museum. He becomes an actor in fleeting performance, creating an image, a minor element of randomness in the otherwise logical progress of the artists' vision. The user has thus become an integral part of the work itself.

However, following up on the work of Walter Benjamin, Chevalier returns to participate, with the utmost innocence in one of today's biggest controversies: cloning: the cloning of images, cloning of artwork, even the cloning of life. It is in this spirit that Synesthésie commissioned a work: 101 Dalmatians. This is a combination of two of the artistic techniques most utilized in Miguel Cheavalier's work: the participation of the audience in the deconstruction of the piece, and the manipulation of the image after a series of "random commands" and transitory processing. The image of the Dalmatians is reprocessed online utilizing the participation of programme users who can freeze an image and direct "the Chevalier staff", signed and certified on line, from 1 to 101 replicas, by the artist.
But, if this approach to cloning remains light and aesthetic (what is a Dalmatian anyway but a cross between a giraffe and a basset hound?), it will encourage discussion on the issue. Everyone is welcome to his own interpretation, and it is his choice whether or not to denounce a society, that essentially worships images, and are not necessarily opposed to perfection of latent eugencs.

Miguel Chevalier, painter of the 21st century. He is duty-bound to commit himself towards the new pictorial wager, standing guard in order to prove to us that what we have been taking as decorative aestheticsm actually hides a pertinent work of art, centered around the organized chaos of today's computer world.