THE AFTERIMAGE ^{PT. 1} ― 2025

How can we preserve our memories in the face of a horizon that goes beyond our presence on Earth? Like a futuristic archaeology, The AfterImageexhibition probes the persistence and remanence of images. Here, artist Hugo Deverchère pursues his reflections on notions of representation beyond an anthropocentric vision, through the speculation of new cosmic languages.

As a result of an itinerant residency in the Atacama Desert, he established a link between pre-Columbian geoglyphs and contemporary infrastructures for the extraction of rare earths. From the sky, the hydraulic networks of the Salar's mines form regular shapes whose spatial organization is reminiscent of the geometric alignments of this ancient language. This exceptional site for astronomical observation has now seen its landscape excavated by copper and lithium mining, which is now essential for all computing technology. The land thus bears not only the traces of an extinct civilization, but also the irreversible stigma of an era in which humans became the primary geological force. The only purpose of extracting this telluric material is to feed a very short-term memory. Never before has a technology stored so much data as digital memory, and never before has it been so threatened by its fragility and limited lifespan. As a result, digital hypermemory is doomed to obsolescence and indecipherability within a few decades at most.

In this interplay between the material and the virtual, immemorial geological time and the programmed disappearance of digital archives, the question of the preservation and conservation of memories beyond our horizon arises. To overcome the inevitable loss of data, fundamental research is exploring new archiving methods based on geology, microbiology and astrophysics. Rocks, synthetic DNA, astrophysical or mathematical constants are becoming as potential languages and storage media, embedding information in structures that go beyond the human or even terrestrial scale.

It was this dizzying and perilous exercise that NASA embarked upon with its Voyager program in 1977. Of the two probes sent out like messages in a bottle to the interstellar space, the only thing the public remembered was the golden disk. Like the pre-Columbian geoglyphs that addressed the cosmos, the Golden Record uses an encoding system intended to communicate to potential extraterrestrials a sample of the culture of an era. Engraved on a copper vinyl, this biased memory could be the only trace of our existence, long after the extinction of the Earth and the solar system.

Since then, interstellar missions have multiplied, and the quality of instruments and optics has improved considerably. Hugo Deverchère is now turning his attention to scientific archives that are sometimes obsolete or forgotten in the basements of laboratories, in order to produce a new human-non-human memory, at the frontier between the geological, the digital and the cosmic.

_{︎ Ceres #01, 2025
Oxyde de cuivre noir, carbone, cobalt et silicium sur plaque photopolymère / Black copper oxide, carbon, cobalt and silicon on photopolymer plate / 40 x 30 cm}

_{︎ 14572.PNG, 2025
Héliogravure au grain / Grain photogravure / 50 x 40 cm}

_{︎ 12638.PNG, 2025
Héliogravure au grain / Grain photogravure / 50 x 40 cm}

Des clichés détériorés des anneaux de Saturne, envoyés par les sondes Voyager à la Terre, il réalise de nouvelles abstractions en noir et blanc. Pour cela, il agrège aux photographies originales d’un format carré de 128 pixels des images provenant de sources diverses, empruntant à des missions plus récentes comme Cassini, mais aussi à des visuels de disques, de sillons ou de microprocesseurs, rendant floue la démarcation entre archive et fiction, vrai et faux. Agrandies, recadrées, remastérisées, les photographies de la série Tracks comportent près de 99 % d’inventions provenant d’analogies formelles ou symboliques. Les anneaux évoquent alors les lignes d’une nouvelle partition dont les lunes de Saturne paraissent les notes de musique.

Selon un procédé similaire de restauration, Hugo Deverchère réalise des héliogravures de ces partitions analogiques sur une plaque de cuivre tandis que les lunes Téthys, Vesta, Cérès, Rhea, Phobos, Steins font elles l’objet de photogravures sur plaques photopolymères. Leur aspect brillant leur confère une forme de mouvement et de légèreté qui tend à s’extraire de la fixité et de la dureté présumée de la matière. À ces matrices de métal, il ajoute des pigments d’oxyde de cuivre, de cobalt et de silicium, éléments de base des microprocesseurs. Ces images en creux, constituées de matière géologique, deviennent des réminiscences d’un réel simulé qui s’écrit par la matière elle-même. Ce paradoxe entre mémoire volatile et cosmique se retrouve dans sa série Marble Recording, où des images de nébuleuses et de poussières interstellaires sont gravées au laser numérique sur un marbre agrémenté de cuivre et de cobalt. Véritable machine à remonter le temps, le télescope James Webb (JWST), à l’origine de ces clichés, capte en direct la formation des galaxies et des étoiles après le Big Bang. En gravant littéralement cette mémoire sidérale dans le marbre, Hugo Deverchère plie le temps cosmique et numérique. Ainsi compresse-t-il le cycle d’explosion à l’origine de la Terre et des minerais qui permettent aujourd’hui de les faire apparaître.

From the deteriorating images of Saturn's rings sent back to Earth by the Voyager probes, he creates new black-and-white abstractions. To do this, he combines the original 128-pixel square photographs with images from a variety of sources, borrowing from more recent missions such as Cassini, but also from visuals of disks, grooves or microprocessors, blurring the line between archive and fiction, true and false. Magnified, cropped and remastered, the photographs in the Tracks series contain almost 99% of inventions based on formal or symbolic analogies. The rings evoke the lines of a new score, of which Saturn's moons appear to be the musical notes.

Using a similar restoration process, Hugo Deverchère creates heliogravures of these analog scores on copper plate, while the moons Tethys, Vesta, Ceres, Rhea, Phobos and Steins are etched on photopolymer plates. Their shiny appearance lends them a form of movement and lightness that tends to extricate them from the presumed fixity and hardness of the material. To these metal matrices, he adds copper, cobalt and silicon oxide pigments, the basic elements of microprocessors. These hollowed-out images, made of geological matter, become reminiscences of a simulated reality written by matter itself. This paradox between volatile and cosmic memory is echoed in his Marble Recordingseries, in which images of nebulae and interstellar dust are digitally laser-engraved onto marble enhanced with copper and cobalt. The James Webb Telescope (JWST), a veritable time machine, is the source of these images, capturing live the formation of galaxies and stars after the Big Bang. By literally engraving this sidereal memory into marble, Hugo Deverchère bends the cosmic and the digital time. In this way, he compresses the cycle of explosions that gave origin to the Earth and the ores that enable its appearance today.

_{︎ Phobos #01, 2025
Oxyde de cuivre noir, carbone, cobalt et silicium sur plaque photopolymère / Black copper oxide, carbon, cobalt and silicon on photopolymer plate / 40 x 30 cm}

_{︎ (2867) Šteins #03, 2025
Oxyde de cuivre noir, carbone, cobalt et silicium sur plaque photopolymère / Black copper oxide, carbon, cobalt and silicon on photopolymer plate / 40 x 30 cm}

_{︎ Vesta #03, 2025
Oxyde de cuivre noir, carbone, cobalt et silicium sur plaque photopolymère / Black copper oxide, carbon, cobalt and silicon on photopolymer plate / 40 x 30 cm}

_{︎ Marble Recording (Simeis 147 - NIR), 2025
Cuivre, lithium et cobalt sur gabbro noir gravé au laser / Copper, lithium and cobalt on laser engraved black gabbro / 80 x 60 x 2 cm}

_{︎ Marble Recording   (M81 - NIR), 2025
Cuivre, lithium et cobalt sur gabbro noir gravé au laser / Copper, lithium and cobalt on laser engraved black gabbro / 80 x 60 x 2 cm}

_{︎ Marble Recording (CAS-A - IRA), 2025
Cuivre, lithium et cobalt sur gabbro noir gravé au laser / Copper, lithium and cobalt on laser engraved black gabbro / 80 x 60 x 2 cm}

_{︎ Marble Recording (NGC 346 - NIR), 2025
Cuivre, lithium et cobalt sur gabbro noir gravé au laser / Copper, lithium and cobalt on laser engraved black gabbro / 80 x 60 x 2 cm}

_{︎ Marble Recording (NGC-6888 - NIR), 2025
Cuivre, lithium et cobalt sur gabbro noir gravé au laser / Copper, lithium and cobalt on laser engraved black gabbro / 40 x 30 x 2 cm}

_{︎ Marble Recording (Deep Field #01), 2025
Cuivre, lithium et cobalt sur gabbro noir gravé au laser / Copper, lithium and cobalt on laser engraved black gabbro / 40 x 30 x 2 cm}

Face à cela, la Terre et nos corps sont en permanence traversés de rayons cosmiques, d’ondes magnétiques et de particules dont on parvient tout juste à capter le signal. Ainsi la neige de nos téléviseurs cathodiques révélait la trace résiduelle du Fond diffus cosmologique laissée par le Big Bang. Si ce rayonnement fossile ne représente que 1 % des interférences, nous avons collectivement et quotidiennement éprouvé cette expérience cosmique, parfois avec agacement, sans savoir que nous contemplions en réalité un langage cosmique de près de 14 milliards d’années.

En collaboration avec le physicien Olivier Dadoun, l’artiste va récupérer des kilomètres de rouleaux de film contenant des centaines de milliers de clichés réalisés dans une chambre à bulles. Cet espace fermé en forme de sphère fut utilisé par le CERN dans les années 1980 pour détecter des particules. Traités par des scannings girls, maintes fois copiés, compressés et diffusés vers divers laboratoires, ces films en quantité innombrables finiront paradoxalement par disparaitre ; comme si l’hypermnésie des données aboutissait à une sorte de bruit blanc qu’aucun œil humain n’est capable de subsumer. Patiemment, l’artiste et le physicien vont procéder à une restauration partielle non pour en révéler l’image idéale, mais pour en établir des cartes ou des graphèmes cosmiques. La série Orbital Verses n’est donc pas la photographie ou l’empreinte directe de particules, mais une synthèse culturelle et mémorielle. À l’instar des IA génératives, le réalisme qui en procède porte la trace d’une mémoire collective qui parfois hallucine et rêve le réel.

Si l’intérêt pour l’imaginaire spatial se justifie souvent par le désir de conquête et d’exploration de l’inconnu, Hugo Deverchère le convoque au contraire pour mieux faire retour sur Terre et prendre la mesure de notre éphémère condition.



Meanwhile, the Earth and our bodies are constantly traversed by cosmic rays, magnetic waves and particles whose signals we barely manage to detect. Thus, the snow on our cathode-ray television sets revealed the residual trace of the Cosmic Microwave Background left by the Big Bang. Although this fossil radiation represents only 1% of interference, we have collectively experienced this cosmic experience on a daily basis, sometimes with frustration, unaware that we were in fact contemplating a cosmic language that is almost 14 billion years old.

In collaboration with physicist Olivier Dadoun, the artist will recover kilometers of film rolls containing hundreds of thousands of shots taken in a bubble chamber. This closed sphere-shaped space was used by CERN in the 1980s to detect particles. Processed by scanning girls, repeatedly copied, compressed and distributed to various laboratories, these films in innumerable quantities will paradoxically end up disappearing; as if the hypermnesia of data resulted in a kind of white noise that no human eye is capable of subsuming. Patiently, the artist and physicist will carry out a partial restoration, not to reveal their ideal image, but to establish a kind of cosmic map or grapheme. The Orbital Verses series is therefore not a photograph or direct imprint of particles, but a cultural and memorial synthesis. Like generative AIs, the realism that emerges bears the imprint of a collective memory that sometimes hallucinates and fantasizes reality.

Although our interest in the imagination of space is often justified by a desire to conquer and explore the unknown, Hugo Deverchère uses it to reflect back on Earth and to better take the full measure of our ephemeral condition.

_{︎︎︎ Orbital Verses, 2025
Restauration et numérisation d'un rouleau de film 70mm issu d’un détecteu de particules (chambre à bulle), CERN, 1981 (Credit archive originale : LPNHE IN2P3/CNRS), Tirage pigmentaire sur papier baryté / Digitalized and restored 70mm film roll from a particle detector (bubble Chamber), CERN, 198 (Original archive credit : LPNHE IN2P3/CNRS), Archival pigment print on baryta paper / 130 x 180 cm}