Thomas Devaux

"We're in an illusion here, the illusion of a painting when we're in photography, the illusion of abstraction when we're in an object blur, and the illusion of the sacred when we're talking about supermarket objects.

Thomas Devaux was born in 1990 and now lives and works in Paris.

The artist defines himself as plastic photographer. He is the author of several complex series in which tradition and modernity intermingle. His photographs, which resemble oil on canvas, serve as the basis for his research into the profane and the sacred. He also deals with the theme of transcendencewhich appears in his early work.

In his "Dichroics" series, he takes his work a step further by integrating dichroic glass into his photographs. Dichroic glass is a material that changes color according to its orientation. Thomas Devaux discovered it while researching a precious material ("pre-cieux") that could last over time and enable him to work with light. Based on NASA research, it has a very high reflectivity index and can therefore be used on satellites or to reflect lasers, for example.

By using this material, the work obeys a more vertical and surprising composition. It integrates the viewer's body by melting it into the color; indeed, it is possible to mirror oneself through the work when one is in the observer's posture. The physical and formal confrontation with the viewer reveals a buried part: that of the "magical primitivism" crystallized by the totem form. In his Totem series, he not only uses color abstraction, but also a very thin format, far removed from photographic standards.