Bio

Based in Brossard, Canada, François Desnoyers (1961-) is a contemporary artist whose practice encompasses painting, drawing, and digital art. Best known for enigmatic scenes or anemic, dirty and dispirited landscapes, his expressionist style of figuration depicts an incomprehensible world plagued by uncertainty and apprehension despite a sustained effort to perceive, predict and remember. Instead of exploring human interactions, Desnoyers focuses on isolation and incommunicability by obscuring part of the information and dislocating the elements of his message, thus making his work intelligible on an intuitive level rather than making it a fact-based accumulation of information or a mere reporting of facts. By expressing himself in this way, the artist asserts that a part of reality will always remain inaccessible and under the sole responsibility of the imagination.

One of his earlier series, “Memories”, was showcased in his first important solo exhibitions in Montreal, at Lieu Ouest gallery in 2000 and at la Maison de la culture Côte-des-Neiges in 2001.

Since 2015, a desire to create a series in line with the current and growing climate crisis slowly brought Desnoyers to explore the landscape genre with a non-conventional approach to surface, thus stretching the boundaries of the genre. For the "Rag Lands" series, he replaced canvas with old rags, used bed sheets and other discarded industrial fabric to signal degradation, precarity as well as to create an aesthetic based on the representation of filth, thus introducing a special harmony of purpose between the material and the subject matter.

Desnoyers has garnered recognition through various solo and group shows in Canada and abroad. In 2007, he took part in the 21^st exhibition of paintings and sculptures at the Chapelle Saint-Benoit d’Argenton-sur-Creuse (France). In 2006, he participated in numerous group shows: the New Art Barcelona exhibit (Spain), the 25^th exhibition of paintings and sculptures at the municipal museum of Ourense (Spain) and the Montreal Festival of Japanese & Canadian Current Art (Canada). He also attended some art fairs in the US: at New Art Miami in 2004 and in 2003 at the Affordable Art Fair in New York.

His work is part of various private, corporate and public collections, such as the Lavalin corporate collection which is now owned by the Montreal Museum of contemporary art.