Félix Luque Sánchez

Born in 1976, Oviedo, Spain.
The work of Félix Luque Sánchez questions the way we conceive our relation to technology and the contemporary issues involved in the development of artificial intelligence and automation. Based on the joint use of electronic and digital systems of representation, of mecatronic sculptures, of generative sound compositions, of real-time data fluxes and algorithmic processes, the narrative procedures on which his installations are based mix fiction and reality and prefigure the possible scenarios of a near future, confronting us with the fears and expectations provoked in us by machines.

His different installations are based on an assemblage of autonomous and uncontrollable systems in which each element plays a functional and visual role. Machines here are not only conceived in accordance with the processes they perform, but also as objects of aesthetic contemplation. Each piece is divided up into different parts, or sections, which can be read as chapters of the same story, the constituent elements of a system, or event attempts to explore a single subject. This fragmentation subverts the apparent unity of the piece and the unfolding of the machine’s operations, which at first sight seems perfect. Failure and vulnerability are everywhere in these installations which show devices that are constantly forced to maintain delicate equilibriums, to pursue mad dialogues, to generate incomplete accounts of reality and, finally, to express themselves by means of generative sound compositions produced by their own activities and the physical processes that these imply. The artist plays consciously on the contradictory perceptions of a technology that is purely functional yet is driven by a mysterious goal, and also on the fear that machines might one day replace us. Inspired by science fiction, whose aesthetic and conceptual foundations he uses to elaborate his speculative stories, he immerses us in the preconceptions about technology that pervade popular culture. The result is a series of works whose technical elegance and intriguing opacity fascinate viewers, who are at once attracted and distanced by these different installations.

Pau Waelder

For Le Fresnoy, Félix Luque Sánchez, in collaboration with Iñigo Bilbao and Damien Gernay, is planning Obsolete TM, an installation project that will question the concepts of technological obsolescence and post-capitalism.

Suggesting a fictive context of devastation and catastrophe, this work will centre on a key symbol of capitalism and mass consumption: the motorcar. A symbol of modernity ever since the second half of the 19th century, today the car is at the heart of questions arising from the major challenges faced by our world: the exhaustion of natural resources and the ecological collapse of the contemporary world. The car industry exemplifies the current fragility of the neoliberal model and of economic globalisation and has also become one of the emblems of the inability of current alternative technologies to meet theses challenges.

Félix Luque Sánchez