Beauty, in which believe, has always contributed to the way I think about my practice. Though at times taboo in contemporary art, this aesthetic stance seems essential to me, especially nowadays. Thinking not so much about the beauty of images, but rather about the idea of beauty, has allowed me to work on the projections of the imagination, and more precisely those of fantasy. How does the desire to see or find in an image what we project into it guide our expectations? What do we expect from images? What do they reveal about our desire and our refusal to see? These questions stay with me. I focused on them in the exhibition initially titled “Fantasmes colorés”, curated by Jean-Michel Quirion and presented at AXENÉO7 in 2023. I explored the question of expectations in relation to images in a vast project, ranging from vernacular photography to pornographic film. I’m happy to present a new version of this endeavour at Centre SAGAMIE.
In the featured film, the on-screen bodies are replaced by a moving, coloured, pulsating light; it’s a film in which one makes love to light, where one contemplates the orgasm of colour without access to the images or details. My exploration of the found image is now assuming various guises, notably in a book co-published by Centre SAGAMIE and AXENÉO7 that you will soon be able to leaf through. The specific inquiries into the sensuality that memory can evoke through colour and light play a central role in this project. I approach them via images, and this is where the essence of my current work resides, or at least where I hope that it may impact the imagination.
Yann Pocreau
My research is driven by the application of my photographic thinking to the multiple definitions of light, which I explore through several media: image, sculpture and installation. Light, its narrative contribution to the reading of images and the history of photography are thus increasingly part of my vocabulary. I’m interested in assessing how light affects the visibility of the world we inhabit, and the ways in which it records it. So I’m very interested in light, its materiality, what it knows, informs or affects. Astronomy, and Earth related sciences, keep me busy in the studio. My career in recent years has been punctuated by exhibitions driven by cosmic vertigo, this new relationship with the world and its phenomena, from the Universe to the center of the Earth. Between a simple dialogue with science and a certain existentialism, I think and produce exhibitions that attempt to address the macro and micro links that shape and design our environment, but also and above all the projections we make of it.
Yann Pocreau was born in Quebec City in 1980. In his recent research in various media, including photography, sculpture and installation, he is interested in light as a living subject and its effect on the narrative framework of images. He has taken part in many Canadian, American and European exhibitions, including the Rencontres photographiques d’Arles and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. His work has been reviewed in various magazines, and can be found in numerous collections, including those of the National Bank of Canada, Hydro-Québec, Desjardins, the City of Montreal, the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée d’art de Joliette, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec and the Galerie de l’UQAM. He is represented by Galerie Blouin Division in Tiohtiá:ke / Mooniyang / Montréal, where he lives and works.
The exhibition Des images-lumière by Yann Pocreau is part of the Inter-Centres/Contemporary Art – Dissemination and Mobility program initiated by Centre SAGAMIE in the visual arts field. This program is funded by Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) to encourages and support the movement of works and artists on Quebec territory through structuring disciplinary initiatives.
