Following a call for projects launched by Residence 1+2, Yo-Yo Gonthier won an artistic commission for the “Prototypes, de l’expérimentation à l’innovation. l’exemple occitan” exhibition initiated by the University of Toulouse. He will exhibit an artistic installation entitled “Aerostat” on the theme of airships, a new mark of contemporary energy sobriety, from 17 april to 27 août 2023, at musée du Saut du Tarn in Saint Juery.

As an artist and art researcher, Yo-Yo Gonthier particularly studies what he calls the first visions, those that we perceive in the sketches of the architect, the engineer, those that we detect in the acrobat’s warm-up movements, before he springs up and creates his gesture, his trajectory. Here it is the idea of ​​flight that interests him, particularly through the theme of aerostation.

From a historical and contemporary point of view, he tries here to question its validity today as a means of transport and as a scientific tool questioning environmental and climatological issues.

But it is the sociological and poetic issues that will be at the center of his approach. The aerostat hypothesis is based on a philosophical proposition, the slowness. It is about traveling slowly, looking at the world, contemplating it and potentially analyzing and studying it.

This proposal is based on iconographic documents showing the evolution of the discipline from the beginnings of aerostation to the present day. The purpose here is to show the educational path which starts from documentary, iconographic and graphic research, sketches and plans, up to the model of a scale model.

The installation will revolve around the model of the prototype L’invisible, created for this occasion.

©Yo-Yo Gonthier, Aérostat, installation, 2022.