Michel T. Desroches is a visual artist born in 1970 and based in Montreal.
Michel T. Desroches started his career as a self-taught painter. He did a lot of live-painting, thus doing mostly abstract improvisation. Driven by the desire to validate his practice by studies, he obtained in 2007 a Bachelor degree in Visual and Media Arts at UQAM.
He is a disciplined and prolific artist, he works every day, motivated by a strong aesthetic exploration. He alternates figurative and abstract works.
Desroches is also an art-therapist since 2006. Through this work, he is close to people with mental disorders and helps them find their balance through artistic expression.
THE SENSITIVE SHAPE
“The presence of the line in my practice is a celebration of feverish gesture through a fragile trace of emotion ” This is how Desroches describes his approach to drawing. To express a kind of absolute emotion, he seeks hard the ultimate form. His quest leads him to explore the balance between lines and gaps, between forms and counterforms. His strokes express the energy of his gestures. He sculpts the spaces of light and shadow with his pencil, builds complex networks, creates playgrounds for the eyes.
“Drawing is to me the visible result of multiple decisions. It is generated through the background of graphic culture ” The choice of abstraction allows intuition to take its full measure, it is a vector that reflects the unconscious. Released from figurative rationality, the line follows an improvised way, guided both by the singularity of each creation and by a certain way to do, a style forged along experience that deeply inhabits the artist.
The sensitive shape renders the encounter of a kind of continuity, the thread that drives the artist, with the fleeting emotion of the moment, which he captures and reflects through his action, his creative presence. Drawings by Desroches are halfway between 2 and 3 dimensions, organic meets geometric, abstraction looks like a dance where we never repeat the same movement. It is no coincidence that he finds a connection between drawing and music, both in the language and in the expression, a kind of visual music.
FACING EMOTION
Desroches portrays almost exclusively faces. “The observation of the human face is conducive to subjectivity. The look and mood that emerge from it offer an infinite range of attitudes and emotions. We all apply emotion detection when seeing a face, it is instinctive. This spontaneous interpretation often reveals an inner state. This identification of emotion creates an attachment.” He bases his sketches and paintings on various sources: photos he takes of participants in its art therapy workshops, expressions of actors in film clips, stills of athletes externalizing their feelings during competitions. Immersed in the heart of the emotional complexity when confronted with mental disordered people, he is regularly exposed to the suffering, the strength of the interior offered by the looks. It is a quest for intensity.
“The face is the sophisticated interface that sometimes betrays our inner states. Drawing a human face is a challenge for me. The presence of the soul is paramount ” Indeed, Desroches is committed to rendering expression rather than morphological similarity.
One say that his characters are inhabited, that a presence emanates from them. Through its exploration of human emotions, Desroches reveals what we all live, all the moods that fluctuate constantly. In each work, he strives to set the mood of a moment.
PART OF THERAPY
The practice of drawing or painting is a domestic process marked by the pursuit of visual balance. It is also a transposition of the search for inner balance. Matter resists us when we paint. This resistance leads the artist to confront, to unfold. “My representation of the human face gives rise to a quest for identity.” Both are linked with one another. Drawing faces led him to watch and capture the emotions, to become sensitive to others. By sharing the emotions of others, he could identify the commons with his own ones and free himself, develop a less inhibited, more direct expression. He loves achieving to convey to the viewer the emotions he has received. A painting is finished when contemplating it he can feel the same emotion he had seen in his model.
THE ELEMENTS OF SYMBOLISM
Desroches defines himself as a symbolist, in the sense that to him image transcends representation, it allows to reach the sacred, to get to a dimension that is larger than the original.
Always intended to make the inner tug visible, Desroches is no longer limited to the representation of the face alone. He superimposes his abstract works and his portraits. Proceeding first by digital montages, he gradually tends to achieve this merging into a single operation, just by drawing.
Desroches also works with colors. Until now he was cautious with the intrinsic emotions that emerge from them, the technical ease acquired with practice gives him more freedom and now allows him to manage graphics and colors together … To give even more intensity and nuances to his works.
FORMATION
Atelier Circulaire lithogravure sur pierre
Atelier d’impression monotype avec Adeline Rognon 2010
Baccalauréat en arts visuels et médiatiques UQAM 2004-2007
AFFILIATIONS
Coopérative Lézarts UQAM
EXPOSITIONS SOLO
2016 Galerie du vieux Saint-Jean
2015 Galerie MX
2014 Exposition États parsemés Galerie Rhein
2013 Exposition solo Méditation Chimique Bibliothèque municipale de Lavaltrie
2009 Parure Galerie La Salamandre (Outremont). (Exposition solo)
2008 Réseaugraphe Galerie Le Courant. (Exposition solo)
EXPOSITIONS COLLECTIVES
2016 Pur dessin Maison de la culture Côte des neiges
2015 Les fenètres qui parlent (rue marquette)
2015 Galerie du vieux St-Jean
2015 Exhib-art
2015 La virée des ateliers
2014 Pur dessin exposition collective à La Chaufferie
2014 Journées de la culture exposition collective galerie Exhib-art
2014 Exposition collective Œuvres choisi Hachem Laval
2014 Exposition collective rêveries et impressions numériques
2014 Exposition collective Œuvres papiers Galerie Rhein
2014 Exposition collective Galerie Dentaire
2014 Exposition collective galerie Exhib-art
2014 Exposition collective Hôpital Notre-Dame (Thématique maladie d’Alzheimer)
2013 Exposition collective Monstera Décover
2013 Exposition collective galerie L’espace créatif
2013 Exposition collective galerie La récréation
2012 Exposition collective enVisager, Galerie MX, Montréal
2010 Galerie Roccia Artiste invité (Formes sensibles et Humeurs variables)
2010 Maison de la culture Frontenac (Manhattan Children’s Wear présente)
2009 Exposition La Chaufferie
2008 Projection vidéo Côté obscur
2007 Exposition Printemps Plein temps UQAM
CONFÉRENCES, COLLOQUES & PRÉSENTATIONS PUBLIQUES
2013 Conférence et peinture en direct centre d’art Sutton
ÉVÈNEMENTS
2014 Vidéos tous azimuts La Chaufferie espace diffusion
2014 La virée des ateliers
2013 La virée des ateliers
2013 Encan Décover
2010 Ex-Hi-Bi Bain Mathieu Peinture en direct et projection vidéo
2010 Symposium de peinture Montréal-Nord
2010 Symposium de peinture St Julie (Peinture en direct)
2009 Projection vidéo Scopetrack (Journées de la culture)
2009 Projection vidéo. (Dérapage 09 UQAM)
2008 Projection vidéo et installation sonore. (Le chat des artistes)
RÉSIDENCES D’ARTISTE