Artist
The exhibition Play, Paint by Numbers… and Learn takes the form of three distinct yet complementary series, each elaborating on a single theme: extracting each pixel of an image from the virtual world and reconstructing it on a different scale, so as to highlight its matrix and give it a three-dimensional physical existence.
All digital images are constructed in the same way: a series of pixels (Picture Element) of a given color. It’s the arrangement of these pixels, identical in format but different in their variation of 255 shades of red, green and blue, that creates the images we see on our screens and on the Internet.
Frank Desgagnés’ photographic practice is tinged with his film studies; the often staged images and the sense of mystery that emanates from them confirm a nuanced narrative sensibility. There’s a common thread running through his practice, linking his projects: the notion of identity that subtly unfolds, a personal quest for meaning through larger narratives.
Frank Desgagnés’ images are often composed of several temporalities that bear witness to the passage of time, while at the same time embodying aesthetics, compositions and themes that blur codes and seem anachronistic. With these temporal superimpositions in the same space, there seems to be both the presence of the elements that make up the photograph and the absence of what has already been: the subtle reminiscence of memories of a place, of the memory of its characters.
Whether through the length of exposure time, the use of out-of-date film or the presence of beings who seem to come from another space, another time, Frank Desgagnés’ photographs use the codes of visual language, thwarting and replaying them.
Website : frankdesgagnes.com
