# the light that is not seen — Interview by Jérôme Sans - Title: the light that is not seen — Interview by Jérôme Sans - Content type: Curatorial text - Language: en - Canonical URL: https://aurecevettier.com/en/bibliography/curatorial-texts/the-light-that-is-not-seen-interview-by-jerome-sans - Published: 2026-09-10T14:13:16+00:00 - Updated: 2026-09-10T14:13:16+00:00 ## Details - Author: Jérôme Sans - Year: 2025 ## Main content **Jérôme Sans: How would you describe your practice?** aurèce vettier: My work is an unrelenting attempt to dream and recreate, fragment by fragment, a world that resonates with the one we know—a world that almost resembles ours, but not quite. In this sense, my approach may not be so different from that of the protagonist described by J.L. Borges in *The Circular Ruins*, who dreams so intensely of a living being that he eventually brings it to life. To reconstruct this world, I assemble elements of a personal mythology infused with my preoccupations. This involves a large body of data, ranging from personal information—texts, family photographic archives—to materials mechanically sourced from the Internet. These are then sorted, prepared, labeled, and processed using custom artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to digest the data and generate new forms, or essences. Finally, these ideas and proposals, born from the multidimensional universe of data, are projected back into reality in the form of hybrid objects, allowing me to tell an ongoing story. **JS: Why did you decide to create “aurèce vettier,” an entity named by generative algorithms, rather than working under your own name?** av: I created aurèce vettier in 2019, and this entity now exists independently, transcending notions of gender or stylistic limitations. The name itself was composed letter by letter using generative algorithms —Markov Chains— trained on a vast array of artist names, writers, scientists, men and women alike, who continue to fuel my imagination. aurèce vettier can exist with or without me; in this sense, the entity aligns with the tradition of conceptual art, which sought to minimize the individual’s presence in favor of the idea. This is why the name is written entirely in lowercase. **JS: You explore a "sur-nature" in your work, notably with your *Potential Herbariums* series. Through AI, nature fuses with the mineral, like a branch sprouting from a table or a wall. Beyond possible references to Arte Povera, especially Giuseppe Penone, are these fragments of nature not reflective of the contemporary fantasy of a static, maintenance-free, fossilized nature?** av: The contemporary approach to nature you describe strikes me as excessively anthropo- and zoo-centric. Particularly in urban settings, there is a tendency to eliminate traces left by plants and nature rather than listening to them. When a century-old fruit tree is cut down and the soil is paved over to build a cubic concrete building, the tree does not scream—at least not at a frequency we can hear. Yet, as Emanuele Coccia suggests: "*We should ask plants what the world is, because it is they who 'make' the world.*" [1] Paradoxically, my fragments of "impossible plants" do not materialize the fantasy of a frozen nature but rather attempt to rekindle a sense of wonder and contribute to repairing reality. Born in the mountains of Savoie, France, I have felt deeply connected to trees, animals, and mountains since my childhood. As a child, I meticulously recorded every encounter I had with different animals and what they "told" me in numerous notebooks. I made herbariums from dried flowers and leaves, and this early curiosity has informed my work ever since. Strange atmospheric phenomena have also always fascinated me: the passage of the Hale-Bopp comet in 1997 remains one of my most vivid memories. At that time, I would craft objects, assemble collections—particularly of minerals—and present them to an audience mostly comprised of my parents and siblings. The body of work within the *Potential Herbariums* series consists of the generation and study of a "sur-nature," an impossible flora that questions our contemporary world’s drive to eradicate natural forms, especially in urban environments, to sanctify and slowly destroy them. To create this herbarium, I trained a specific AI model, a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), on four million herbarium sheets, sourced from various natural history museums around the world or created during my nature walks. This AI model allowed me to generate plant forms that resemble those of our world but exhibit numerous anomalies: asymmetries, stems looping back on themselves, abrupt cuts in their overall construction, and highly irregular leaf shapes. Even with four million examples shown to the machine, it seems unable to replicate the infinite capacity of nature to create forms ensuring its survival. On the contrary, this synthetic nature, taking on these impossible configurations, seems to be slowly orchestrating its own demise. I strive to represent this "sur-nature" through paintings and bronze sculptures that unfold this anti-Darwinian vegetation in three dimensions. **JS: Could you elaborate on your creative process, particularly for these sculptures?** av: Bronze sculptures are rather special objects: they are likely among the very first sculptures generated with the help of AI models, notably those exhibited during the *Opus Sectile* show at Galerie Darmo in 2021. However, they are also the result of a unique and specific process. Starting from images of impossible plants generated by GANs, I create 3D models of this vegetation using another type of algorithm, known as “lifting” algorithms. I then venture into the forest to collect small fragments of branches that precisely match the sections of these 3D models. From there, I assemble wooden maquettes, 3D-print leaves, and cast these maquettes in bronze, before assembling, chiseling, and patinating them. The artisanal gesture, crucial in my practice, is an invitation to compromise and allows projection into reality. While AI is commonly used to generate content at scale, I use it paradoxically—to digest, explore new forms, and ultimately produce less. Similarly, while bronze is typically employed to create multiples, the "lost wood" technique I use results in unique pieces. Gradually, this nature unfolds: trees begin to rise from the ground. Initially frail, they grow stronger. Simultaneously, a timid fauna begins to emerge, starting with sporadic flocks of rare butterflies, which I began showing this year in the United States with Spaceless Gallery. **JS: In parallel with this "sur-nature," dreams are a recurring obsession in your practice. During your residency at Dragon Hill in fall 2024, you continued your series *le travail des rêves*, culminating in *the light that is not seen*, a collection of 24 paintings derived from AI-generated images fueled by your memories of dreams, childhood photos, videos, and more recent photographs. What does your fascination with dreams, and this notion of "sur-réalité," signify?** av: The second pillar of my practice is indeed a long-term exploration of dreams. In a way, you could say this allows me to provide context for the impossible vegetation—to depict the backgrounds, skies, and environments. It’s an invitation to complete the story. I am fascinated by dreams because they seem to offer an immediate digestion of reality, visualized rather than interpreted. Like AI, which digests large volumes of data, dreams often result from a fusion of emotions and situations. In 2021, I began feeding a custom AI tool with my childhood photos, family archives, and images from my phone. Since then, I have been using this algorithmic aide to visually depict my dreams based on the descriptions I manage to recall upon waking. I rediscover familiar forms and colors, along with recurring motifs and scenes: strange and inexplicable atmospheric phenomena, fragments of Greece, a black Porsche speeding by, mountain landscapes, a bearded man glimpsed in a forest, ghosts, Notre-Dame engulfed in flames, Death caught dancing to dancehall music, flocks of yellow butterflies, immense white Borzois, or even the rapper Kalash Criminel emerging from a Rothko painting. The first paintings derived from these dreams were presented in the *Circular Ruins* exhibition at Galerie Darmo in 2022 and later in *le travail des rêves* during Bright Moments Paris in 2024. I noticed that many visitors, upon engaging with the paintings, began sharing deeply personal stories and memories, often lingering in the space to the point of struggling to leave. While the subjects of these paintings stem from my dreams and a deeply personal reservoir, the resolution of the imagery remains sufficiently low for others to interpolate—to fill in the gaps with their own experiences. During my residency at Dragon Hill—a serene environment in a silent, right-angle-free house designed by the legendary architect Jacques Couëlle—I lived in a monastic and somewhat isolated manner. Bathed in sublime light, I felt as if I were living in paradise. Confronted with myself, however, I experienced the resurfacing of old, existential anxieties, which naturally fed into my dreams. I realized these dreams needed to converge and generate larger frescoes. The "sur-réalité" that emerged at Dragon Hill through the 24-painting series *the light that is not seen* could be summarized as a collection of enchanting situations, suffused with the colors of the Mediterranean or Greece, yet always tinged with an underlying unease—something that might catch up with us at any moment, keeping us on edge. For now, my dreams seem to suggest that "*I can never truly be at peace*". **JS: Dreams are central to Surrealism. What is your relationship with this movement born in the 1920s?** av: At first glance, I understand that these images might be labeled as surrealist since they are derived from dreams. The forms they contain are often surprising, and my approach to reconstructing these dreams is purely intuitive and automatic. I spend a great deal of time reading, studying art history, and exploring nature. All of this, along with my encounters and personal trials, inevitably finds its way into my dreams. Every morning, when I recall an interesting dream, I document it systematically. Sometimes, I remember only an emotion; at other times, I can describe a scene with photographic precision or recount an improbable combination of elements. When I later generate an associated image using my AI tool, working in a state of release, I allow myself to revisit and refine it several times until I intuitively land on the image I envisioned. The digital tools I use function primarily as aides-de-camp: I select what resonates with me from what they generate, akin to the approach taken by Vera Molnár, with whom I collaborated in 2023. That said, my practice does not claim any direct lineage to Surrealism or other movements I find fascinating, such as the OuLiPo. My creations stem from a generative machine precisely calibrated to my imagination, tasked with combining a multitude of elements within constrained physical and temporal spaces. The result is essentially a form of tortion. In *Simulacra and Simulation* (1981), Jean Baudrillard describes the four successive phases of an image: “*The image is the reflection of a profound reality; the image masks and distorts a profound reality; the image masks the absence of a profound reality; and finally, the image has no relation to reality whatsoever, becoming its own pure simulacrum.*” I believe that working with dreams allows me to create pieces that simultaneously embody all four of these phases. **JS: How do you think artists of the 1920s differ from those today who explore similar issues?** av: It seems difficult today to push a medium to its ultimate limits or to adopt a posture of rupture, as avant-garde movements did until the early 1980s. We have moved beyond the era of mechanical reproduction. While I wouldn’t claim that everything has been invented—art will always have the power to tell extraordinary stories—we are now at a multidimensional inflection point, where the role of the artist and the nature of their work are undergoing profound transformation. It is fascinating to witness this moment, where new technologies are pushing creative boundaries, and that the artisan's gesture is, more than ever, regaining its nobility, but where many are also seeking something deeper, more meaningful in their existence and practice. In this context, the art world strikes me as a complex system—certainly more so than the way I imagine it was in the 1920s—with numerous stakeholders and implicit, often unspoken rules. My natural instinct when faced with such a system is to study its rough edges. To do so, I perpetually try to "hack" my own brain as I work. **JS: You often represent dreams through diptychs, juxtaposing two disparate images like a digital dreamscape leaping between realities without transition—resembling a perpetual “exquisite corpse.” What does this new reality represent to you?** av: My work revolves around synchronicities—associations that are symbolically and temporally coincidental, though not necessarily causal. Carl Jung wrote extensively about this phenomenon, which he saw as representing a form of bi-reality, a junction between the psychic and the physical, opposing Cartesian dualism. My diptychs materialize this bi-reality. **JS: The Surrealists considered the unconscious world to be above reality, “more real” than reality, thus labeling it "surreal." Much like this unconscious universe and the realm of dreams, is AI a new form of “sur-réalité,” an augmented reality? Is AI akin to a “third reality,” like a third eye?** av: We live in a four-dimensional reality: the three spatial dimensions and the dimension of time. In mathematics, particularly algebra and topology, as well as astrophysics, it is possible to work with far more dimensions than those of the real world. This allows for more complex operations and pushes certain intellectual boundaries. When one wants to return to a smaller number of dimensions, a projection is performed, accepting a loss of information to reenter a familiar world. However, the calculations conducted in a higher-dimensional space enable progress in reasoning or storytelling—something has happened. In literature and mythology, we find worlds where additional dimensions come into play. This is true of many works by Haruki Murakami. In *Kafka on the Shore* (2002) and especially in *1Q84* (2009), the appearance of multiple moons in the sky signals that the character is living almost in reality, but not quite. In this in-between state, this vibration, impossible encounters occur, astonishing events unfold, and synchronicities emerge. Dense, strange forests are traversed by the narrator, and when only one moon remains in the sky and reality is restored, the narrator is no longer quite the same. They have observed the light that is seen, but also the light that is not seen. These notions deeply influence my work. I use artificial intelligence primarily as a tool for introspection, to explore additional dimensions, and to perhaps question the unconscious in a new way. Sometimes, I write texts or poems and create visuals using custom tools that I’ve painstakingly developed based on my own data. The machine generates proposals, and the vocabulary, forms, and colors feel familiar to me. Often, I intuitively and quickly choose what resonates among these proposals, transforming it into a work of art. It is only much later—sometimes years later, through a chance encounter or synchronicity—that the piece takes on its full meaning. In those moments of epiphany, I don’t believe AI predicts the future. Rather, it highlights personal elements that have always been present in the background, perhaps within the “sur-réalité” you mention. Beyond their generative capacity, I am intrigued by AI’s ability to digest vast volumes of data and reveal “the light that is not seen.” **JS: How do you define the contribution of artificial intelligence to your practice and to the contemporary world?** av: For me, artificial intelligence is not a medium; I see it primarily as a tool—a very powerful one, certainly—but one whose generated forms must absolutely lead to the creation of physical objects and experiences, even if we still see too little of that today. Increasingly, I realize that a technology as potent as AI has the potential to change the role and place of the artist. Since Marcel Duchamp, the object has perhaps become less important than the experience it can offer. Now, I believe we are moving from the experience of the object to something else. It seems to me that the artist must involve their own being and the world in a form of “adventure”—though I still find the word imperfect. I am extremely enthusiastic about the possibilities offered by AI tools, but I am also aware of the need to democratize access to creative expression. I am convinced that one day, many of us will want to use AI reflexively—training custom models based on our personal data to enhance introspection, creation, and the exploration of new possibilities. On November 26, 2024, a group of artists and hacktivists, including myself, took action to reopen OpenAI’s technology to the public. We provided indirect access to *Sora*, OpenAI’s video-generation model, through an open-source front-end on HuggingFace [2]. At the same time, we released a statement aiming to denormalize the exploitation of artists for research and development purposes, as providers of training data, and as PR tools for the “overlords of AI.” We called on artists to think beyond proprietary systems and the constraints imposed by Big Tech-driven models. The HuggingFace page and the accompanying open letter quickly went viral. OpenAI shut down the entire program three hours later, by which time 217 videos had been generated, enormous queues had formed, and the results were widely shared across the internet. The event received international media coverage. The questions raised by this group of artists are important: How do we retain effective ownership of our personal data or creations? How do we maintain freedom and flexibility in the use of AI? How do we ensure that these tools remain genuinely open and accessible to all, without replicating or amplifying the barriers and biases that already exist elsewhere in society? Beyond technology, the artist increasingly serves as a true research laboratory for society. In the future, it’s likely that the traditional model of salaried work will decline, gradually replaced by a constellation of independents working in clusters and on a project basis. This is already happening in my practice. Within this framework, how do we form a society, how do we create a shared narrative? How can we contribute to changing the world and repairing it, even as a small entity? I am committed to contributing to the real world as an artist, helping to gradually repair it. For this reason, I’ve begun collaborating with foundations and NGOs dedicated to preserving life, reforestation, and ecosystem restoration, with precise measurements of the outcomes. My hope is that, in the medium term, placing a bronze tree in a collection might help restore a certain number of hectares of forest, care for a specific number of animals, or support a community with measurable results. I don’t plan to communicate openly about this, but rather to embed it deeply into the economic model of my practice. **JS : Your approach seems paradoxical: while using artificial intelligence, you simultaneously rely on the most traditional medium—painting. Why do you feel the need to anchor the current reality in the historical framework of painting?** av: Turning to painting to represent forms generated by AI allows me to add an extra layer of information with a crucially sensual gesture that materializes the transition into the real. We have historical perspective on the durability of paintings: if well-preserved, they can endure for centuries. This reassures me, at a time when increasingly sophisticated technologies seem to contribute to creating ever more fragile works. **JS : Your residency at Dragon Hill allowed your work to scale up—from small formats to larger ones. What does this shift in scale represent?** av: In recent years, by exploring *sur-nature* through the *Potential Herbariums* and *sur-réalité* through *le travail des rêves*, I feel I’ve built an alphabet—a set of working tools whose aesthetic I now master. The paintings created during the Dragon Hill residency allowed me to deploy this alphabet in all its complexity, to develop and test the tools necessary to create true large-scale frescoes—history paintings, in a sense. Some of the paintings, such as *a bearded man crossing a forest surrounded by flocks of yellow butterflies* (AV-2024-U-642) or *ghosts encountered on the road to Castellane* (AV-2024-U-651), serve as studies for immense tapestries being produced for an exhibition at the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon. This change in scale has opened up new possibilities and enriched the narrative density of my work. **JS : How do you envision the future?** av: When I created aurèce vettier in 2019, I decided to tackle what seemed to me the most challenging endeavor: writing a book of poetry. To write *Elegia Machina*, I truly walked a fine line, with the help of algorithms called Markov Chains. From a mass of text spanning thousands of pages, generated by this algorithm, I extracted hundreds of small "epiphanies," which I then assembled to form a story—a kind of odyssey. From Notre-Dame in flames, we set off to explore numerous conceptual territories, eventually arriving at the edge of a forest. I now realize that all my work over the past few years has continually referenced this text, conceived in a half-digital, half-sensual way. It was the beginning of my journey, and now I must write the next chapter, starting again from that forest. This new chapter will likely involve the ascent of a mountain—"*the bond between Earth and Sky*", as René Daumal describes in his unfinished book *Mount Analogue* (1944). In this text, which André Breton dreamed of integrating into his surrealist revolution, Daumal recounts the search for, discovery of, and ascent of a mountain so high it deflects the sun’s rays. On this mountain, one finds strange peoples with unusual customs and a flora and fauna never before seen. It’s as much an exploration of the world and its wonders—undertaken with both seriousness and lightness—as it is an inward journey. Climbing a mountain begins, of course, with traversing a forest. The trees surround us; they communicate with one another; their presence reassures us, up to a point. When we venture too deep, we find ourselves alone, confronting our own fears. If unprepared, anxiety can take over and overwhelm us. Sometimes we fail to cross the forest and are forced to turn back, though we collect some samples as souvenirs. This was the narrative of my exhibition *forêt, tentative,* in the summer of 2024. But when we do emerge from the forest, we are often not quite the same. Stepping out into the open, we know that something has happened. Have we glimpsed infinity, caught a vision of the future, or uncovered something that was always there, in the background? The light that is not seen shines so brightly, that it sometimes can be seen. -- [1] Emmanuele Coccia, *La vie des Plantes – Une métaphysique du mélange* (2016). [2] More information about the performance on: https://artinthecageofdigitalreproduction.org/#aurece_vettier ## Relationships ### Related exhibitions - [NVIDIA GTC 2025](https://aurecevettier.com/en/exhibitions/nvidia-gtc-2025-paris.md) - [as the world enters into resonance](https://aurecevettier.com/en/exhibitions/as-the-world-enters-into-resonance.md) ## Official references - [Author website](https://www.jeromesans.com/)