Born in 1992 in Le Havre, Hugo Pétigny is interested in the energies transmitted or used in art.
After studying electrical engineering and photography in Le Havre, then graduated from the University of Lille and the Fine Arts of Tourcoing and currently at the Fresnoy National Studio of Contemporary Arts, Hugo undertakes artistic research that mixes light and electricity. Through installations or photographs, he seeks to develop processes that make it possible to image the interactions between light and electricity that generally occur in closed environments.
Inspired by the writings of Solar Punk, Hugo seeks to propose a world in which humans are closer to their environment through exchanges with light, leading for example to a reconsideration of solar time or an egalitarian positioning of humans with the idea of plant photosynthesis.
In installations aiming to be autopoietic (generating themselves in relation to their environment), Hugo Pétigny seeks to deepen our relationship with the living by considering particles (photons, electrons, etc.) as characters influencing our daily actions. It is a world of constant exchange with the infinitely small that Hugo Pétigny proposes, using photovoltaics in particular as a formal representation of a future in which all living things and matter are interconnected.
Hugo borrows from the impressionists their research on light that he encountered during his youth in Normandy and it is in optical art and Land art that he draws the social issues that animate his work.