Biography | Artistic Approach
François Arès, born in 1979, is originally from Alberta. He lives and works in Montreal. A member of the 'Something' Group since 2014, François Arès questions our relationship to time and space around us. He plays with our perception of certain objects whose use, shapes and materials are familiar to us.
The series Inside/Out can be seen as a temporal return to the aesthetic of the latter half of the 20th Century. The objects that are selected in this series, always in plastic, are deeply ingrained in our society and imbued with iconic value. As time passed, as a symptom of the age of overconsumption, these objects were collectively discarded and put aside for novelty. However, the relationship one had created with such an object remains as a glow of attachment to what that object represented in a time and place.
Inside/Out looks at the deeper meaning or purpose of an object, one that no longer plays its original role, but represents who we were at a point in time. It seeks to challenge conventional ideas about art and identity by transforming iconic, mass-produced items from a distinct cultural era to redefine our view of a product’s lifespan and how we define ourselves according to what we own in the everyday. The repetitive and mechanical aspect of his technique draws our attention to the details. It is this desire to catch the eye and challenge our pre-established relationships with objects that drives this aspect of his artistic practice.
In his "Definition" series, he juxtaposes layers of black dots or dots of pure colours on overlapping plexiglass sheets to obtain an optical effect that changes depending on the viewer’s perspective. The silhouettes he super-imposes, print a fleeting instant, cells frozen in time, awaiting the viewer's gaze to be read. The systematized mechanical aspect of his technique is broken by the imperfection of the gesture, that of his hand which, when he sets the point on the surface, accepts the pictorial accident. The particularity of his work lies in his desire to use the spectator as an additional layer. Each creation maintains a unique link with the viewer through his memories, emotions and history.