Nicolas Darrot
Fuzzy Logic

Nicolas Darrot, «Yuki Otoko» detail, 2025. Courtesy the artist and Galerie C; Photo: Nicolas Darrot.

Nicolas Darrot. Fuzzy Logic

5 March 2026 – 7 March 2027

Fuzzy Logic transforms Basel’s smallest exhibition space, a former telephone booth at Museum Tinguely, into a stage for automated figures, presenting a selection from Nicolas Darrot’s series of the same name in five acts. Visitors activate the Theatre of Automatons themselves by scanning the barcode on a custom-designed playing card, whereupon the figure comes to life, singing, dancing and moving according to its own fuzzy logic.

The figures and machines are never seen on their own but are part of a whole, a milieu - an 'Umwelt', to use the German term. It is this milieu that gives them their life.

5 Acts – 5 Openings

Each of the figures will be inaugurated with an opening and accompanying programme. Personalities from Nicolas Darrot's circle are invited to engage in dialogue with the artist and his works.
 

1/5

>> 05.03.2026, 6:30 pm: Nanashi-Chan, 2024
Artist Nicolas Darrot and curator Andres Pardey: about Fuzzy Logic (Talk in English, 30 Min.)

 

2/5

>> 07.05.2026, 6:30 pm: Bone Machine, 2026
Thierry Dufrêne: Les automates de Nicolas Darrot (discours en français, 30 Min.)


Nicolas Darrot (born 1972 in Le Havre) lives and works in Paris. In his sculptural and installation-based work, he creates robot puppets, automata and mechanical figures that move between theatre, technology and mythology. The artist programmes these works himself. This interplay of craft skills and digital mastery developed after he graduated from the Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1998, when he worked as part of a special effects team in film production, an experience that had a key influence on his subsequent works. His studio is a workshop and a programming suite in one, where precision meets chance, as motion sequences constructed with to-the-millimetre accuracy lead to unpredictable choreographies. This deliberate openness has become an artistic principle.

Nicolas Darrot, Nanashi-Chan, 2024. Courtesy the artist and Galerie C. Photo: Nicolas Darrot.

Fuzzy logic accepts what conventional logic rules out: ambiguity and vagueness. As a form of artificial intelligence, it allows computers to deal with the kind of non-clarity that is inherent in human thinking. The real world is imprecise by nature: twins can be told apart, the line between day and night is blurred, our knowledge on a given topic often remains incomplete. Darrot’s figures embody this logic of incompleteness as they move, full of uncertainty and mood swings, in spontaneous dances and complex games.

 

The movement of certain figures is determined by chance. For some works, Darrot composes and programmes the soundtracks himself, for others he uses recordings or works with musicians – each element is an integral part of the overall experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The activation of the Theatre of Automatons is covered by our general museum admission fee.

 

Curator: Andres Pardey

Portrait: Nicolas Darrot

Biography

 

Born in 1972 in Le Havre, Nicolas Darrot attended the École des Beaux Arts de Paris and the École d'Architecture de Grenoble. He works on installations and projects with human and animal automata that he embeds in narrative contexts. His artistic research has gradually expanded, developing a comprehensive reflection on poetic and systemic dimensions of the living.

 

In 2016, Maison Rouge in Paris hosted an overview of Darrot’s œuvre, and he was invited to the 2017 edition of Le Voyage à Nantes. His work was been shown in France in the exhibitions Artistes et Robots at the Grand Palais and L'invention de Morel at the Maison de l'Amérique Latine, and internationally at the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale (2018) and the Setouchi Triennale in Japan (2022). Other exhibitions have included Les Portes du possible at Centre Pompidou-Metz and Les Choses at the Louvre.