Thomas Charvériat

Thomas Charvériat
Thomas Charvériat, Shanghai 2009
Born	Thomas Harron Charvériat (1974-03-07) March 7, 1974 Paris
Nationality	France
Education	Tulane University in New Orleans, School of Visual Arts in New York, Columbia University in New York, The Audiovisual Institute (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) in Barcelona
Known for	Electronic Art, Digital Art, New Media Art
Awards	The Joan Sovern Award for Excellence and Distinction in Sculpture, The Annette Kade Charitable Trust Fellowship

Thomas Charvériat (born 1974) is an artist, curator and art director.

Biography

Life

Thomas Charvériat was born in Paris and attended the School of Visual Arts in New York, receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography in 1998, and pursued graduate coursework at Columbia University, receiving a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture in 2000. His teachers at Columbia University included Jon Kessler and Ronald Jones.
Later, he moved to Barcelona where he obtained a Master in Digital Arts with honors from the Audiovisual Institute (Pompeu Fabra university). Currently, Thomas Charvériat lives and works in Shanghai.

Career as Artist

As an artist, Thomas is known for his work utilizing LED, video, GSM modules, SMS, light sensors, sound and humor that interact with the spectator, and putting together everyday objects to generate interactive and entertaining works.^[1] A review in Eurasia One writes that "Style and wit are combined to create a playful, visual, auditory and kinesthetic experience."^[2] He has exhibited in Paris, Rome, New York and Shanghai among other cities.^[3]

Notable Works

The Return Policy Project was a year-long exploration into the consumer’s dependency on electronic products in 2000. The name came from the method of using return policies to put the products back into circulation once the electronics had been altered. The idea was to affect a person's life by affecting the objects which the particular life was based or built around.^[4] The project is reminiscent of the work by the Barbie Liberation Organization, a group of artists that purchased talking Barbie dolls, opened them, altered them, and returned them to stores to be bought by an unsuspecting shopper, in order to play with the relationship between consumer and product.^[5][6]

Career as Curator

Charvériat is the founder of Liu Dao, an internationally recognized art collective including artists and engineers whose collaboration is dedicated to the development of a technological platform for the future benefit of the artist community.^[7] The philosophy of the collectives is to create originality from the benefit of dialogue and collaboration among young artists, thereby rising above work that is solely commercial or overly derivative.^[8] Through communication between the curator, art director and artists of Liu Dao, an exhibition subject is chosen and developed as inspiration for each artwork in a Liu Dao exhibition.^[9]

His curatorial aim is to promote the use of technology and interactivity in art. Charvériat is the director of island6 Arts Center in Shanghai and Montcada5 in Barcelona, two not-for-profit ventures dedicated to promoting emerging artists.^[10] Since 2004, his organizations have supported 250 artists and helped in the creation and realization of 1400 projects through a growing technical consultancy laboratory and a unique and intensive art production residency program.^[11] Charvériat also encourages young artists to work together as a way of developing non-egocentric identities that help them stand out from the enormous number of artists in the world in order to break though competition barriers in the art profession.^[12]

Selected Exhibitions (as artist)

Selected Exhibitions (as curator)

Selected Exhibitions (as art director)

References

• Video interview of Thomas Charvériat by onnetworks, directed by Georges Sledge, first aired 03.2009
• Video interview of Thomas Charvériat by ICS, produced by "City Beat", first aired 2008.12.26
• Video interview of Thomas Charvériat by Jalou TV
• Campion, Sebastian (February 15, 2005). "What you buy is almost what you get". Retrieved 2009-05-05. 
• Ding, Yilin (October 2007). "Animated Art". Xinmin Weekly (in Chinese) (Shanghai, P.R.C: Xinmin Limited): 62. ISSN 1008-5017. 

Bibliography

• Matthew Neckelmann, 'An island in the ‘hai', That's Shanghai, April 29, 2009
• Qiu, Yiping (April 2008). "Thomas Charveriat". Caifu Dichan Magazine (in Chinese) (Shanghai, P.R.C: Brawman International Group Shanghai Shangge Culture Development) (45): 96–101. ISSN 1813-0569. 
• Riom, Aude (January 28, 2010). "FRANCAIS A SHANGHAI - Thomas Charveriat "N’attendez pas, faites !"" (in French). Retrieved 2010-01-28. 

External links

• http://www.m5project.com: Artist’s Web Site
• http://www.rhizome.org: Online resource for people who are interested in new media art
• http://www.island6.org: not-for-profit art space founded by Thomas Charvériat
• http://www.artmajeur.com: online art gallery (virtual art galleries) for contemporary Artists. (Page on Thomas Charvériat)
• http://www.urbanatomy.com:Urbanatomy, Shanghai Curator Profiles: Thomas Charvériat
• http://artnews.artlib.net.tw Review of Liu Dao at Louis Vuitton in Taipei (in Chinese)

See also

• island6, art space founded by Charvériat.
• Liu Dao, a Shanghai-based art collective founded by Charvériat and Mellupe.
• interactive art
• video art
• Electronic art
• Digital art
• New media art