Hubert Duprat

Zero Arte Contemporanea, Piacenza
Through May 28

For the first time in Italy, Hubert Duprat is showing Larves aquatiques de trichoptère avec leur etui, his aquarium teeming with insect larvae living in a gold cocoon. An important work-in-progress on the relationship between man and nature, the piece reflects the artist’s interest in the caddis-fly that, according to Darwin’s theory of evolution, should have been extinct by now, but have instead survived thanks to a particular strategy. Building shells from materials found in riverbeds—pebbles, sand, twigs—the insects have adapted to environmental changes and found ways to defend themselves.

Duprat creates a favorable habitat for the larvae in the aquarium, who edify their shells “artistically” with precious materials such as turquoise, gems, and grains of gold. The shells thus become permanent sculptures, tiny Wunderkammer masterpieces whose artistic eccentricity is highly similar to the exceptional nature of the species. The artist also exhibits some chosen cocoons in a display case—giving them the appearance of relics from a prehistoric civilization—and a video showing the larvae in the process of creating their “artworks.”

Duprat effects a side step from scientific process to artistic production method, thus drawing attention to the contrast between human dominance and the animal kingdom. The results expose the contradictions between positivist scientific thought and the essential ambivalence of art itself—natural/artificial, imitation/creation, order/chaos—as well as that between the principles of natural evolution and of artistic creation.




Marinella Paderni
Translation by Rosalind Furness