MONOGRAPH
CET OBSCUR OBJET DU DÉSIR

THOMAS DEVAUX
BY CAMILLE BARDIN

Luring is a process common to all Thomas Devaux's work. His photographs woo the eye of the beholder and hide their true nature. The seductive colors in his Rayons series are obtained by photographing the products on our hypermarket shelves. Using a powerful blur, the artist captures the synthesis of chromatic ranges meticulously chosen by neuromarketing experts. These works, akin to abstract expressionism, take on a softness that contrasts sharply with the ferocity of capitalism. Gold-ringed like fetishes, these photographs combine religious iconography, the modernist theories of Kandinsky and Rothko, and the consumerist triviality of our times. They offer a broader reflection on the relationship and points of tension between the profane and the sacred.

These rays were a whisper, the harbinger of a siren's song. With his Totem series, Thomas Devaux doesn't evoke adoration, he provokes it. Designed with dichroic glass, these works strike the retina, forcing viewers to move ever closer to them. Shiny, moving, reflective: everything is there to seduce a sometimes inapplicable public, whose eye has already seen everything or seen too much, stunned by the gigantism of contemporary art fairs and distracted by vernissage conversations. Thomas Devaux brings together all the direct stimuli ready to boost our primitive brain. He uses light to better impact our neurotransmitters and promote serotonin production. He summons our memory capacities, our emotions and our attention, replaying all the marketing strategies we apply to consumer products. More radical, these works directly engage viewers, who are no longer simply observing the relationship between the article and the consumer; they are now fully subject to it.

Thomas Devaux is one of those artists whose work does not necessarily have a militant purpose, but whose practice acts as a revealer. He has chosen the posture of one whose works present a cold synthesis of our world without pushing viewers to think one thing rather than another. He is neither an anti-capitalist militant nor a marketing advocate. So, above all, it's a question of free will: are we in full possession of our means when we take a resolute step towards a work by Thomas Devaux, or when we choose this product over another? Humans fancy themselves as rational animals, even though most of the decisions they make are influenced by a capricious brain that prefers to let itself be seduced by a convincing instinct.

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Camille Bardin, art critic and independent curator