06 - L'âge du social, 2025

Denis Verdier  

In this collection, I seek to explore the relationship between nature and technology. Year after year, I've observed one increasingly encroaching upon the other. So I wanted to revisit each memory where technology entered my life, for better or for worse. From MP3 players to flip phones, from laptops to smartphones: ten canvases, ten personal accounts. Here is the one for this painting:

During this same period, with everyone connected, social networks emerged. Facebook swept everything before it. The perfect tool that allowed us to connect with each other, organize parties, join groups, and so on. If only it had stopped there... But with this golden age of Facebook, others launched. We thus arrived at the hyper-connected internet: Instagram, Vine, Snapchat, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and so forth. And since we have computers and smartphones that follow us everywhere, waves of notifications crashed down. These pop-ups appear with their red bubbles on apps, and their incessant little noises. I think it was the first time I started to feel suffocated by technology. Around 2013-14, I started turning off my email notifications, thinking about how to separate my professional and personal digital lives, so that work wouldn't encroach on my personal time. Especially since, at that point, we reached the ultimate smartphone: the touchscreen glass panel with all the applications. It replaced our iPod, our Game Boy, our camera. We had everything at our fingertips, right in our pocket...