Joanie Lemercier

The artist.

Lemercier’s Point cloud series was featured in the New York Times as part of a story to illustrate the ethical challenges of using the very energy intensive Ethereum blockchain. Now that the structural flaws of inefficiency have been fixed (Ethereum moved from PoW to PoS) Lemercier is back to the Ethereum blockchain after a 2 year break.

Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/climate/nft-climate-change.html

In this series the artist is trying to convey the chaotic feelings one may experience in times of climate crisis, a sense of humility and sideration that strikes while contemplating the impacts of forces in nature, the amplification of winds, storms, floods, fires and extreme weather events induced by climate change. This particular aesthetic of the dark sublime is very much influenced by the epic engraving works of French painter Gustave Doré (1844-1883).

While the work can be seen as a metaphor for the climate crisis, it also suggests the overwhelming scale of the other challenges humanity is facing. Visual cues also suggests the weight of geopolitical instability and ongoing nuclear threats. The artist’s experience of the technological sublime in German coal mines grounded his realization of the hopelessness of techno optimism.

Joanie Lemercier (b. 1982) is a French visual artist and environmental activist whose work explores human perception through the manipulation of light in space. Working primarily with light projection and computer programming, Lemercier transforms the appearance of everyday objects and forms, bending reality to his imagination. His work transcends the flat surface, extending dimensionality through the interplay of light and shadow on materials such as wood, glass, paper, ceramics, textiles and water.Lemercier was first introduced to the process of creating art on a computer at age five by attending classes on pattern design for fabrics that were taught by his mother. This early education grounded his interest in physical structures: geometry, patterns, and minimalist forms. As Lemercier’s work evolved, he began to explore these elements through the physics and philosophy of how light can be used to alter perceived reality.

Much of Lemercier’s practice is inspired by nature and reflects on the representation of the natural world through mathematics, science, and technology. Abstract environments rendered as refined grids, lines, shadows, and volumes give way to majestic landscapes assembled from these same minimalist forms. In recent years, Lemercier has become increasingly concerned with climate change and environmental degradation, lending his projection skills and artistry to activist causes and groups such as Extinction Rebellion, meticulously tracking and publishing his studio’s carbon footprint, and supporting initiatives like #CleanNFT to encourage other digital artists to reduce their own environmental impact. His latest video installation, The Hambach forest and the Technological Sublime, premiered at Fundación Telefónica in 2021 on the occasion of the artist’s first major solo show, looks at the devastating effects of coal mining on one of Europe’s oldest forests.

Lemercier has been working with projected light since 2006 and co-founded the acclaimed visual label AntiVJ with artists Yannick Jacquet, Romain Tardy and Olivier Ratsi in 2008.He has been represented by a New York based gallery since 2010.Focusing his practice on installations and gallery work, he has been exhibited around the globe in institutions such as the China Museum of Digital Art in Beijing, Art Basel Miami, Sundance Film Festival, Espacio Fundación Telefónica in Madrid and collaborated with several sound artists: Murcof, Flying Lotus and JayZ.Since founding his creative studio in Brussels in 2013, Lemercier has been developing ever more ambitious installations, gallery pieces, and research experiments that expand the creative possibilities of projected light in space. In recent years, he has sought to completely dematerialize the projection surface, working with transparent materials and water mist.

Since 2015, the studio is now based in Brussels, Belgium, and ran by Juliette Bibasse.

Capturing the ethereal sublime

For many years, Lemercier’s obsession in representing natural landscapes pushed him to create hundreds of iterations of mountains, valleys, volcanoes, dunes and oceans. Code, software and algorithms allowed him to explore the aesthetic of the sublime, particularly inspired by the German romantic painters from the 19th century, through lines, grids, patterns to represent the outlines and details of nature. Yet, one entire cluster of sublime objects resisted the artist’s explorations: Clouds and skies. Lemercier felt held down by current computers ability to model reality: the inner structure of clouds being one of the most challenging to recreate with software, many of his attempts to represent skies with digital tools fell flat. During his travels, the artist has photographed hundreds of real clouds in various locations and lighting conditions, documenting in an attempt to understand and capture the secrets of the sublime.

As photography couldn’t quite represent and reflect the artist’s intentions, it took him a decade to find his way through these clouds: le pointillism.

Stippling / Pointillism

The dots pattern and their density help create the illusion of depths and shadows, gradients and brightness, a technique inherited from the pointillism movement, born in Belgium and France in the late 19th century. The positions of points are calculated by an algorithm to measure, process and determine the most efficient arrangement and density and dots: “weighted Voronoï”

Informal Voronoi diagrams can be traced back to 1644 by René Descartes and were named after the Ukrainian mathematician Georgy Voronoï, in 1908.