David Neirings

It is often written that the work of David Neirings belongs to a new form of “abstraction”. This is true, but only partly. While it is correct to see his work as a radical redeployment of the principles that gave rise to abstract art, it should also be seen as the production of new images that are more suited to the reality of our contemporary world. The artist draws his formal vocabulary from the signage of transit zones, bar codes, credit cards, road markings, trademarks and brand logos. His activities with graphics software and graphic designers combined with his keen interest in club culture have formed the background from which he has developed his visual language. He mixes these styles to create new models and a new artistic language, which he uses to produce installations reminiscent of airports, sport playgrounds, etc. but also coded computer data, circuit boards etc. His large installations include elements of sculpture, painting, even wall painting (or rather “ground painting”), all linked by networks of coloured tape. However, the combination of the seduction generated by the formal beauty of his installations and the visible imperfections arising of his working process signals a latent anxiety weighing on the human spirit. Media such as radio, television and cinema, and more recently the Internet and mobile phones, have generated a perception of the world modelled by an ocean of signals without frontiers. For the artist, individuals float in this ocean, their existence and their identity represented by icons, cursors, passwords, credit cards, disembodied voices and PIN codes. These are the new forms of representation to which David Neirings tries to give flesh.

Pierre-Olivier Rollin

For the Ariane de Rothschild Prize, David Neirings presents a new series of paintings and sculptures that are formally quite different from his previous works, moving away from abstraction towards paintings that can be situated in the realm of the hiperrealism. Not withstanding this substantial aesthetical shift, the new series is founded on principles that have always been present in his work, such as the fascination for speed, particularly related to Formula 1.

Filipa Oliveira