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Paul-Émile RiouxClouds 132022
2022
$13,800
£10,340.55
€12,122.15
CA$19,326.80
A$21,662.03
CHF 11,340.37
MX$267,296.57
NOK 142,456.24
SEK 134,096.56
DKK 90,431.99
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About the Item
Archival photo print under acrylic glass.
Dimensions: 48 x 48 in.
Depth: 1/4 in.
Artist and photographer Paul-Émile Rioux lives in Montréal, Canada.
His lifelong interest in cutting-edge media technology as well as his expertise in photography cast him as pioneer in digital art and allow him to develop virtual matrix from which he extracts his images.
In his works he explores a universe that lies at the crossroad of abstraction and the figurative, inviting the viewer to determine if what he sees is a reflection of reality or imagination.
Through is truly unique approach RIOUX is one of the most innovative artists in digital creations and one of the few creative minds able to blend with such keenness aesthetics research and critical distance.
Whether they translate into a Dantesque urbanity or the infinite horizon of a turquoise ocean, the urban territory reflected by his creations offers a dystopian view of the world, challenging our attitude towards the environment and the future.
From the onset, RIOUX has no intention of matching IRL expectations of what digital art 'should' look like, but strives to play with our notions of what's real, what's not, how we remember, and how we infer meaning into imaginary visual constructs.
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RIOUX started the Cloud project in 2022.
Paul-Emile Rioux’s series Cloud, like his other work, is a kind of aesthetic thought experiment. Each square image is bisected symmetrically, or nearly symmetrically, by a tidy horizon. The upper half display forms that appear as clouds, the bottom as an underwater seascape, yet at the same time mimics the cloudlike formations of above.
Formally these works reference hard-edged abstraction, minimalism and abstract expressionism, though juxtaposed with a sort of Instagram lifestyle sensibility. When shown as a gridded series, they recall the Instagram account @insta_repeat which curates gridded typologies of nearly identical influencer photos – for instance sunsets on a beach, or campfires with hiking boot clad feet visible in the foreground, transforming images, which individually are meant to signify the good life, into symbols of stifling homogeneity, cynically trying to capitalize on mass-produced sensations.
Unlike past movements in abstract or minimal art, however, Rioux is not striving to create self-contained objects, but windows into deeper currents that churn in the dark spaces where culture, technology and the subconscious flow together. Rioux’s digital works are not specifically images, but notes, ways of thinking. They connect to a larger discourse.
With Clouds, Rioux thinks aloud about what is hidden and what is revealed in our relationships to technology and nature. It is a meditation on “the cloud,” which, like real clouds, seem immaterial, but in fact are physical and have a material impact on the world. Rioux considers the juxtaposition between weight and weightlessness – the apparent weightlessness of virtual reality, against the mass, the inescapability of the material world. Technology promises a world of lightness, connectivity and the bounty of limitless growth, or if it cannot quite muster that illusion, at least the offer of escape into a simulated universe of carnivalesque distraction shepherding us away from the environmental catastrophe our economic system inflicts on the earth. In this series Rioux asks us to reflect on what the clouds hide.
There are 18 pieces in the Cloud collection.
Each archival pigment print is produced under the supervision of the artist.
The print is mounted under a single piece of 1/4"/ 6 mm gallery museum acrylic glass.
The back is bounded on a coated Alu-Dibond photography mount panel
with aluminum/cleat hang system.
- Creator:Paul-Émile Rioux (1953, Canadian)
- Creation Year:2022
- Dimensions:Height: 48 in (121.92 cm)Width: 48 in (121.92 cm)Depth: 0.25 in (6.35 mm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Miami, FL
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU13612149362
Paul-Émile Rioux
Paul-Émile Rioux creates evocative digital art that pulls the viewer into an uncanny world and provides a haunting reflection of reality. His virtual color photography and landscape photography pieces reveal their synthesized nature only upon close inspection.
Rioux is based in Montréal, Canada, where he studied animation at Concordia University. In the early 1990s, he established a career in photography with a focus on urban environments. At the same time, he was developing an interest in 3D software. Eventually, the virtual world overtook the real one as his main passion.
Rioux combines his photography with cutting-edge technology to create the virtual matrices from which his images are born. He eschews more popular image manipulation technologies, such as Photoshop, in favor of numerous digital techniques and 3D software. Each technology is like a different paintbrush that helps Rioux generate the final image, which is the result of algorithmic possibilities captured in a cut of virtual space and time.
Rioux’s new media work offers a tense glimpse of a dystopic world populated by infinite skyscrapers. It encourages one to pause and reflect on the future and the environment.
Whitehot Magazine advises the viewer to “think of one of Rioux’s works as the template for a truly engulfing experience.” Though the worlds he brings to life exist only digitally, they represent a meeting of reality and imagination.
Rioux’s work was exhibited at the 2021 Cube Art Fair in New York City.
On 1stDibs, find a collection of Paul-Émile Rioux’s digital art.
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View AllClouds 16
By Paul-Émile Rioux
Located in Miami, FL
Archival photo print under acrylic glass.
Dimensions: 48 x 48 in.
Depth: 1/4 in.
Artist and photographer Paul-Émile Rioux lives in Montréal, Canada.
His lifelong interest in cutti...
Category
2010s Contemporary Color Photography
Materials
Plexiglass, Archival Pigment
Clouds 12
By Paul-Émile Rioux
Located in Miami, FL
Archival photo print under acrylic glass.
Dimensions: 48 x 48 in.
Depth: 1/4 in.
Artist and photographer Paul-Émile Rioux lives in Montréal, Canada.
His lifelong interest in cutti...
Category
2010s Contemporary Color Photography
Materials
Plexiglass, Archival Pigment
Clouds 18
By Paul-Émile Rioux
Located in Miami, FL
Archival photo print under acrylic glass.
Dimensions: 48 x 48 in.
Depth: 1/4 in.
Artist and photographer Paul-Émile Rioux lives in Montréal, Canada.
His lifelong interest in cutti...
Category
2010s Contemporary Color Photography
Materials
Plexiglass, Archival Pigment
Clouds 7
By Paul-Émile Rioux
Located in Miami, FL
Archival photo print under acrylic glass.
Dimensions: 48 x 48 in.
Depth: 1/4 in.
Artist and photographer Paul-Émile Rioux lives in Montréal, Canada.
His lifelong interest in cutti...
Category
2010s Contemporary Color Photography
Materials
Plexiglass, Archival Pigment
Clouds 4
By Paul-Émile Rioux
Located in Miami, FL
Archival photo print under acrylic glass.
Dimensions: 48 x 48 in.
Depth: 1/4 in.
RIOUX started the Cloud project in 2022.
Paul-Emile Rioux’s series Cloud, like his other work, is a ...
Category
2010s Contemporary Color Photography
Materials
Plexiglass, Archival Pigment
Clouds 5
By Paul-Émile Rioux
Located in Miami, FL
Archival photo print under acrylic glass.
Dimensions: 48 x 48 in.
Depth: 1/4 in.
Artist and photographer Paul-Émile Rioux lives in Montréal, Canada.
His lifelong interest in cutti...
Category
2010s Contemporary Color Photography
Materials
Plexiglass, Archival Pigment
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