He will produce an exceptional “sound and light” show in a few days, partly Dutch.
Presentation by David Gumbs, a fine example of success in “multimedia” art.
A native of Guadeloupe, David Gumbs grew up on the island of Saint-Martin. He lives and works between Paris and Martinique. After obtaining a DNAP Art (national diploma in plastic arts) in 1999, he obtained a DNSEP Art (higher national diploma in plastic expression) in 2001, then a Master specializing in design in new media at the Ateliers / ENSCI from Paris in 2002. He has been teaching since 2009 at the Caribbean Campus of the Arts in Fort-de-France. In addition to his participation in two important biennials in the Caribbean, he has worked in artist residencies in France, the Caribbean and more recently in the United States and China.
Although he sees himself above all as a multimedia artist, David Gumbs frequently switches from traditional mediums to new technologies with astonishing ease, drawing and photography remaining the basis of his work. Thus, his practice turns out to be of great plastic and semantic richness, like the many themes addressed in his artistic career.
Artistic approach
It is undoubtedly the artist himself who best defines his polymorphous artistic practice: “I am a multimedia artist. Like this quote “nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed”, by Antoine Lavoisier, XNUMXth century philosopher and chemist, my artistic approach questions the origin and the cycle of life, the alive, the notion of scale in the microcosm / macrocosm, the sacred, memory, the “witnesses” of time and the individual and collective mental image. My research invests the fields of the landscape, the mental landscape and the body ”.
Despite the apparent complexity of his approach, a common denominator seems to have guided David Gumbs' work for many years; that of the mystery of living things that he tirelessly questions at different spatio-temporal scales. The more recent use of digital video projection systems of moving images immerses us in a virtual universe, both strange and familiar, made up of photographic and infographic hybridizations.
David Gumbs is interested in the mechanisms of sensory perception and the construction of mental landscapes. His work, which he defines as “polymorphic”, explores the process of hybridization of the Caribbean collective imagination; Through representation-perception games and the construction of a symmetrical system, David Gumbs reveals the intrinsic links between fragments of personal memory and collective memory.
For these projections he uses interactive video and sound installations (in real time).
Immersion in the heart of the device, mobilizes sensory-emotions such as hearing, sight, affect (cultural and heritage representations).
The artist thus creates memorable, aesthetic and sensory exchanges that allow a new experience. The result is a graphic, invasive and all-encompassing vision.
The work questions the place of Man, of the spectator as an actor in his environment and develops the notion of interactivity. It is the metaphor of the relationship between man and his environment.
Some works
• Magma 1, 2006. Digital painting.
• Sirens. Series of 52 color, black and white photographs.
• Macrotidien. Series of 51 color, black and white photographs.
• Journey into the work, 2011. Interactive video installation and wall drawings.
• Soleil Magma, 2013. Interactive video.
• Untold Camouflage, 2013. Interactive video.
• New Species, 2014. Interactive video installation.
Reasoned sitography
• “Tv interview, Ô Rendez-vous RFO” and “TERRE D'ARTISTES N25 DU 26 06 - DECOUV'ART”, videos published by David Gumbs on Vimeo.
David Gumbs has published numerous videos on Vimeo, mostly devoted to the filmed rendering of his graphic, digital and video works. Two of them, dated 2009 and 2014 respectively, are interviews with the artist discussing his career and his artistic approach.
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