Recommend unpublished works that we would like to collect? This is the bet of the Docent app released by Helen Nguyen-Ban. To the challenge of quantifying artistic emotion.
A Soulages at the entrance. Ohmorning and its smooth hue in the shrouded semi-darkness of an atypical Parisian apartment, where artworks can be guessed everywhere, like a startlingly intimate journey to be deciphered. This is one of the first paintings bought by Helen Nguyen-Ban. At the time, still a student at Montpellier, he tried to reconcile his studies and life in his new metropolis after his African youth. Since then, he has continued to surround himself with works of art. After ten years at LVMH, which launched Marc Jacobs ready-to-wear, then three dedicated to pimping Nina Ricci’s character, the collector-turned-gallery-owner adventure VNH (2013-2019) is now launching the Docent app, called: to become the Tinder of art, that is, to be able to bring works of art closer to those who appreciate them. A disruptive startup at the intersection of art and science, which he backs with his partner, co-founder and chief strategy officer (CSO), Mathieu Rosenbaum, professor, researcher and Chair of Applied Mathematics at the Paris Polytechnic Academy. Winner of the 2020 Louis-Bachelier Prize, a European award recognizing major contributions to mathematical modeling in finance and financial risk control, and winner of the 2021 Quant of the Year Award in the field of quantitative finance.
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At Docent, he brings together a small battalion of brains to optimize his scientific methodology and develop algorithmic recommendation techniques applied to contemporary art that are able to capture users’ taste and color to guide them to works they will love and desire. CQFD. Seventy galleries and institutions in twenty-six countries showcase the artists (today 1,000) and currently 10,000 of their works. Or how from works manually tagged according to fifty criteria (movement, brushes, layout, composition, provided emotion, etc.) and liked by the user, Docent will be able to take everyone one step further, from exposure to exposure. “The algorithm takes over Chief Executive Officer (CEO), is able to screen texts, identify words that qualify the artist’s practice: universe, inspiration, theme, etc. – and then cook deep connections bringing together artists beyond basic visual standards.” He had the intuition for this new model in front of a report that explained how for the first time a machine beat a player of go, “a game even more difficult than chess”, and even became smarter than the player. …
Collector
To translate it into an artistic model, Docent researchers are creating neural networks that think differently from humans, without the bias of emotions, with the idea of putting artificial intelligence (AI) at the service of the collector. The idea is not to recommend the main artists who have the most online content, but to go further by pushing everyone’s perimeter to get them out of their “echo chamber” and why not buy from 500 on the platform. €. The project has already won the BPI, which awarded it two grants, last year labeled deeptech and this year I-Nov. Helen, whole and determined, prepares to embark on a fundraising marathon. The lady makes few concessions. His collection proves it. Long “horrible” deeds for his daughters, an object of shame to their classmates. A lifeline for their mother. In a Parisian living room, large canvases invade the walls and tell a story of beautiful curiosity. “My collection in Paris dates back ten years, picking up the collection that has since moved to London. There are many Asian antiques: this drum, XVIII temple cabinetse – Ethiopian chairs… It is a mix of antiques and modern art with very established artists such as Oscar Murillo from Colombia, Harold Ankart from Belgium who lives in New York, Raphaela Simon who lives in Berlin, Paul Tabouret, a very young artist who living in Paris, the American Sterling Ruby, whose fabrics make me think of African batik fabrics, the Cameroonian Pascal Martin Taihu, with whom I opened my gallery, and Zhang Huan, a Chinese artist… Now I collect artists. that I personally know and want to support.”
My head, my brain and my culture are quite western. My spirituality is in Asia and my heart is in Africa. I have a very strong, visceral connection with African artists
Helen Nguyen-Ban
This artistic world tour echoes him. “My greatest asset is living in Africa for eighteen years, having a Vietnamese father, an Alsatian mother and living between Paris and London.” French high school in Cameroon, Togo and Ivory Coast. In the latter country, his mother is a professor of philosophy. His father works in coffee and cocoa production. the daughter retained a “chocolate obsession” marked by a childhood spent barefoot, visiting plantations and opening beans to eat. taste the raw material. At 18, he arrived in France to study, “the biggest shock of my life. I never wore a sweater, I didn’t know anyone…” he insists and adapts to Montpellier. He dreams of art history, his father of HEC. It will be Sup de Co Montpellier, a bridge between two worlds. Then luxury in Paris and elsewhere, for LVMH and Nina Ricci. Life at a hundred miles an hour. “My head, my brain and my culture are quite western. My spirituality is in Asia and my heart is in Africa. I have a very strong, visceral connection with African artists. In London, “where the sun sets at 3 p.m.,” he succeeded Catherine Petitgas for three years as head of Fluxus Art Projects, the non-profit arm of the UK’s Institut Française dedicated to supporting contemporary art. art on both sides of the channel. During the twelve years of its existence, more than one hundred and fifty artists have already been supported.
Art without borders
She devotes time to this “charity” stolen from her weekends and her family: husband and three daughters aged 19 to 17. A new way for the woman, who is also a member of the Tate International Committee and the Asia-Pacific Committee of the Center Pompidou, to continue the process started with her gallery; to bring to France lesser-known international artists and to show French people who are not visible in international fairs. Housed in Yvonne Lambert’s former space for six years and sold to Zwirner before the pandemic, the VNH gallery “allowed her to turn her passion into work and understand the workings and behind the scenes of the art market.” So when the global lockdown led to the digital transformation of this world, the “momentum” came to dare Docent, this intelligent facilitator of artistic connections. He never resold one of the works in his collection. We remember the works of Andres Serrano or Damien Hirst. For him, “art is a way to reunite my fragmented identity between Asia, Africa and Europe. I’m inspired by the artists I paint around me from all these different places around the world, and all these works are part of my family. Each of them retains its share of mystery.
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Source: Le Figaro
