FREDERIC DATY

Behind the name of DATY, work in total complicity Andrea and Frederic Saenz-Daty. She is a performing artist and sound alchemist. He is a graphic designer, painter and sculptor. They are two French artists currently residing in Paris.

After 20 years of solo careers, in 2019 they unite their artistic skills to develop sensitive and moving sculptural works with raw materials sometimes enhanced with augmented reality. They also explore the world of meditative music with ‘Sound and Design’ events. With primary materials, street elements – metal, tar, rust, sand, spray paint – and stylized forms stripped of the overflowing images that floods us and knocks us down, Daty requalifys the environment and create ‘ high reliefs ‘ of steel and shadows by playing with light and three dimensions to recreate an anamorphic world, to the altered and lyrical reality. Invoking the surrealist world of Hieronymus Bosch, the symbolism of Gustave Moreau or the engravings of Gustave Doré, drinking from the illustrators of heroic-fantasy and science fiction (Moebius, Jodorowsky), Andrea and Frédéric are fascinated by the light effects of the shadow theater Chinese PiYing, the kinetic art of Tinguely or Shun Ito and plays with perspectives in the manner of an Escher or modern 3D shooting techniques. DATY plunges us into a world of bubble cities, Birdviews, portraits and roots where our reality is stylized, distorted, where humans are only suggested. Inspired by the performing art of Andrea, the two artists use the decomposition of movements and sound, with influence of the choreographies of Bianca Li or Pina Baush, contemporary theater and opera or even the sensual magic of tango. 

«  We don’t want our art to be just a detail, just a caprice or a funny little pink rabbit, slave of a consumer society. We want it to speak to the viewer forever. We want it to be a witness of our world and a witness of our emotions. Our art reflects our deep feelings: very minimalist and yet full of symbols and meanings. It’s exciting to find a connection between the visual chaos of our world and a minimalistic approach in order to go back to the essential. « Then only the skeleton of steel springs from the wall and the light plays with the forms and recreates life. The result is a force of narration, a magnetism where the spectator is surprised to try to fill the voids, feels absorbed by the energy released, driven by the movement, the adhesion or the rejection. DATY rewrites the world, our world. Conjurers of light and shadows, Daty explores the links that exist between nature, technology and emotions. 

“There are always three elements to our work: the metal symbolizing Mother Earth, the stylized figurative and musical shapes representing the spiritual realm, and the light and shadows that evoke movement and change.” “Our art is our cure and our way of sharing. It’s an incredible feeling of connection.” Andrea and Frederic DATY  are the sole artists worldwide creating post-industrial, avant-garde, high-relief 3D steel wall sculptures incorporating performances, music and live sculpting.