Savage – WHATEVS
Savage – WHATEVS
Art Fluent
May 01 – June 01, 2021
Urban abstraction meets mythic undercurrent in this digital meditation on civilization and its discontents.
Selected for Art Fluent's vibrant and unfiltered WHATEVS exhibition, Arnaud Quercy's Savage confronts the viewer with a striking digital composition rooted in abstract-poetic text. In a world shaped by the structures of reason, ambition, and light, Savage whispers of what lies beneath—an eruption of ancestral fire from the margins of modern civilization. The work emerges from a poetic fragment written for the One Word challenge and dedicated to Gemma Egmo, blending urban abstraction with mythic undercurrent in a visual language that speaks to contemporary anxieties about societal fragility.
The digital composition layers architectural forms—towers, grids, geometric planes—against an enigmatic face emerging from shadow and smoke. This fractured visage, caught between construction and dissolution, embodies the tension at the heart of Quercy's practice: the perpetual conflict between humanity's drive to build and the primal forces that threaten to reclaim what we have made. The figure's intense gaze, partially obscured by urban geometry, suggests consciousness trapped within—or breaking free from—the cage of civilization.
The work evokes both architectural triumph and the reawakening of something primal, serving as a warning and a mirror—an allegory of forgotten souls, rising instincts, and the illusions of progress. Quercy's digital practice draws from his broader exploration of philosophical and theological themes, examining tensions between celestial and terrestrial realms that appear throughout his body of work. Here, those tensions manifest as the collision between human ambition and latent chaos.
In Quercy's digital universe, we are both the Builders and the Beast—suspended between enlightenment and rupture. Savage challenges contemporary assumptions about civilization's permanence, questioning what forces lie dormant beneath polished surfaces. The work resonates with the exhibition's irreverent spirit, presenting not a decorative image but a confrontation with the viewer's own assumptions about order, progress, and the thin veneer of civility.
Artist Statement
"Run, Citizen! Run and hide fast! A savage of a new era is gashing open the doors of your homes."
— Arnaud Quercy, Abstract Essay No. 44
This body of work emerges from the collision between contemporary urban experience and something far older—the instincts and energies that civilization has sought to contain but never quite extinguished. Savage began as a response to the One Word challenge, a constraint that paradoxically opened vast territories for exploration. The single word became a lens through which to examine the fragility of our constructed world.
Logistics
This online exhibition ran from May 1 through June 1, 2021. The exhibition is now archived but remains available for online viewing at
Art Fluent.
