These 12 drawings are the beginning of an inventory of those bodies of the Solar System known as “asteroids”, made of ice and rock. Some of them are found in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, while others orbit planets (Mars, Saturn) and still others are “Earth-crossing”, that is to say they have an oblique, autonomous orbit. NASA missions have photographed them close-up or far away, with high precision or less precision, as they have passed close by, or while these missions were using them to “bounce” during longer journeys.

The act of drawing them brings in the idea of perceiving them, beyond seeing them. An archaic act for archaic bodies. It is as if lifting a pencil to represent them had become a ritual, an animistic form of worship. Drawing possesses that almost mystical characteristic of trying to capture the shape and light of things, and I am interested by the paradox that consists in using a 19th-century technique of drawing to reproduce images created by the highest technology. This paradox introduces the idea of time, and intensifies the faraway, inaccessible feeling, because every image, no matter how well-photographed, remains a total abstraction insofar as no human has been able to contemplate, with the naked eye, that which it represents.

Nicolas Moulin (born in 1970 in Paris) lives and works in Berlin. He is graduated from l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Paris-Cergy.He was nominated to the prix Marcel Duchamp in 2009, Paris (FR). Moulin currently shows his new project, «Albedo», at galerie Valentin in Paris (FR).

He is preparing an important retrospective exhibition at the space Camille Claudel of Amiens, (Fr) for autumn 2018.

His personal and group exhibitions include: Villa du Parc - Centre d'Art Contemporain, Annemasse (FR); FRAC Centre (Fonds Régional d'Art Contemporain); Espace d'Art Contemporain de Rouen (FR); Espace Uhoda, Cork, (BE); Centre National d'Art Contemporain - La Villa Arson, Nice (FR); FRAC PACA, Marseille (FR); Musée d'Art Contemporain de Marseille (FR); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (FR); UBAC - Centre National de la Photographie, Paris (FR); Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund (DE); MOCA - Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago (US); CENTRALE for Contemporary Art, Brussels (BE); ikob - Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Eupen (BE); Domaine de Chamarande (FR); Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin (DE); Galerie des Galeries, Galerie Lafayette, Paris (FR); Centre Pompidou Metz (FR); MOCA - Musée d'Art Contemporain, Seoul (KR); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (JP); Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg (FR); CAPC, Bordeaux (FR); Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton; Calmbridge University (UK); Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (FR)...