Biography

Néo Valen

Visual artist, Paris

Néo Valen: From the Shadows of Systems to the Light of Délestage

Born in 1974 in Paris, Néo Valen grew up in a city where cultural vibrancy clashes with the machinery of modern systems. Graduating in 1998 with a DESS in Statistical Techniques and Computer Science (Panthéon-Assas), he built a decade-long career (1998-2008) as a Business Intelligence consultant, designing control systems for companies. These tools, though efficient, seemed to him to stifle the world’s poetry, trapping emotions in cold algorithms. This critique of systems sowed the seeds of an artistic revolution.

In 2008, Valen, then known as Arsen Eca, broke with this past to become an artist. His early works defied norms: in 2005, he published the first novel written in emoticons, narrating the TWA Flight 800 disaster without naming it, reissued in 2017; in 2008, he marketed “Nothing,” an immaterial concept sparking a controversial tax audit. In 2020, he erected an invisible sculpture of Emmanuel Macron in Paris’s 5th arrondissement, a viral work drawing crowds. These bold gestures foreshadowed the Délestage, where poetic acts – throwing a cobblestone into a pond, guiding a Trigger to find a needle in a haystack – generate Vibrances, codified and pulsing in emochains synchronized with Cell-ion.

Valen’s journey is marked by trials. In 2014, a raid on his studio, targeting provocative installations like sick-leave dispensers, was a turning point. In 2019, Google’s first censorship erased his entire online presence, deemed “meaningless content,” isolating him and forcing a reinvention as Néo Valen. In 2021, following the viral success of the invisible sculpture, Google struck again, removing all his work from the web, cementing his critique of oppressive systems.

With few exhibitions, favoring an experimental practice outside traditional galleries, Valen’s showcase of Cell-ion at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in 2015, where he won the Makerfaire first prize, attests to his work’s power. Now living and working in Paris, he orchestrates a poetic revolution, challenging the immediacy of “click and collect” with the Vibrance System ([vibrance.systems](https://vibrance.systems)). Explore the hidden depths at emochain.art and discover his vision at our dedicated page.