Through sculpture, image, and video installation, Victor Unwin’s work is the result of complex protocols serving ideas based on both personal and philosophical foundations. In his work, the aesthetics arise less from appearance itself than from the structure of appearance. Fed by a deep distrust in the concept of image, and the dangers of new sacralities, Victor Unwin produces system-works fed by non-conventional narrative forms, with the intent of creating alternative ways of thinking.
One might be tempted, upon seeing the artist’s work, to describe Victor Unwin’s practice as research- based. Unexpectedly, the dense and abundant research that precedes Victor Unwin’s productions fades at the last stage, when the work moves forward to its final form. In the end, porosity and emptiness seem to prevail — as if the surface of the work was swept away to allow the audience to navigate better, to breathe better within it. This mass of information does not disappear — it silently structures the most fragile, strange, and precious ideas, so that they can radiate without trembling.
Within these structuring systems, image holds a particularly complex and contradictory role for Victor Unwin: as the quintessence of non-neutral objects, it grasps the gaze and seduces the mind. It is an “insufficient realness” serving an “excess of reality” — a great part of the artist’s work revolves around this Gordian knot. The image itself is a conflict — a conceptual problem with no apparent solution, that only a radical action can resolve and slit through. Whether gathered or created by the artist, the images presented by Unwin are arranged, composed, and placed so that they can present both the subject and the object they consist of. Victor Unwin’s approach here is clear: the invocation of a subject by the image cannot be done without evoking the deception it primarily consists of.
In contrast with the hidden rigor of the systems they frame, some fragile topics emerge, with one fundamental common point: each element is systematically loaded with a personal and biographical charge. For an obvious truth runs like a red thread through Unwin’s works: to speak is to speak through oneself, whether you want it or not. Every subject is a latent biographical subject: erasing this trait is trying to make science out of experience. This is precisely the challenge at the heart of Unwin’s practice: extending his communities, recalled memories, emotions, places and spaces, into a common ground that is neither too personal to be selfishly cathartic nor too general to be vaguely prescriptive.
At the end, Victor Unwin’s entire artistic approach could partake from one desire: to have an idea — an idea of one’s own, justified, solid, and shareable without fear. A sacred idea, but sacred for oneself. Like images, the sacred is a concept-fight, both a disease and its remedy. Unwin’s approach expresses a deep mistrust of contemporary forms of the sacred — capitalism being a good example. To use the mechanisms of sacrality for oneself may be a more honest alternative to these dominant systems. The work thus becomes both a political counterweight and a creative witness, able to generate a critical introspection on the systems that constrain the audience.
Victor Unwin (born 1994 in Pontoise, France) is an artist based in Paris. After a career as a filmmaker, photographer and creative director, he shifted into a personal artistic practice coupled with an editorial practice. His work has notably been exhibited several times at Galerie Derouillon (Paris) and is part of the Kandinsky Library Collection at the Centre Pompidou.
Through sculpture, image, and video installation, Victor Unwin’s work is the result of complex protocols serving ideas based on both personal and philosophical foundations. In his work, the aesthetics arise less from appearance itself than from the structure of appearance. Fed by a deep distrust in the concept of image, and the dangers of new sacralities, Victor Unwin produces system-works fed by non-conventional narrative forms, with the intent of creating alternative ways of thinking.
One might be tempted, upon seeing the artist’s work, to describe Victor Unwin’s practice as research- based. Unexpectedly, the dense and abundant research that precedes Victor Unwin’s productions fades at the last stage, when the work moves forward to its final form. In the end, porosity and emptiness seem to prevail — as if the surface of the work was swept away to allow the audience to navigate better, to breathe better within it. This mass of information does not disappear — it silently structures the most fragile, strange, and precious ideas, so that they can radiate without trembling.
Within these structuring systems, image holds a particularly complex and contradictory role for Victor Unwin: as the quintessence of non-neutral objects, it grasps the gaze and seduces the mind. It is an “insufficient realness” serving an “excess of reality” — a great part of the artist’s work revolves around this Gordian knot. The image itself is a conflict — a conceptual problem with no apparent solution, that only a radical action can resolve and slit through. Whether gathered or created by the artist, the images presented by Unwin are arranged, composed, and placed so that they can present both the subject and the object they consist of. Victor Unwin’s approach here is clear: the invocation of a subject by the image cannot be done without evoking the deception it primarily consists of.
In contrast with the hidden rigor of the systems they frame, some fragile topics emerge, with one fundamental common point: each element is systematically loaded with a personal and biographical charge. For an obvious truth runs like a red thread through Unwin’s works: to speak is to speak through oneself, whether you want it or not. Every subject is a latent biographical subject: erasing this trait is trying to make science out of experience. This is precisely the challenge at the heart of Unwin’s practice: extending his communities, recalled memories, emotions, places and spaces, into a common ground that is neither too personal to be selfishly cathartic nor too general to be vaguely prescriptive.
At the end, Victor Unwin’s entire artistic approach could partake from one desire: to have an idea — an idea of one’s own, justified, solid, and shareable without fear. A sacred idea, but sacred for oneself. Like images, the sacred is a concept-fight, both a disease and its remedy. Unwin’s approach expresses a deep mistrust of contemporary forms of the sacred — capitalism being a good example. To use the mechanisms of sacrality for oneself may be a more honest alternative to these dominant systems. The work thus becomes both a political counterweight and a creative witness, able to generate a critical introspection on the systems that constrain the audience.
Victor Unwin (born 1994 in Pontoise, France) is an artist based in Paris. After a career as a filmmaker, photographer and creative director, he shifted into a personal artistic practice coupled with an editorial practice. His work has notably been exhibited several times at Galerie Derouillon (Paris) and is part of the Kandinsky Library Collection at the Centre Pompidou.