From Sculptural Perfection to Deconstructed Beauty

I seek to redefine my artistic creation by deconstructing the image to bring it closer to everyday life, seen through a filter of imperfection and spontaneity, where textures, colors and fragmented framing reveal a more organic beauty.

Over the past twenty years, my artistic approach has followed an evolution marked by a progressive exploration of the human body, light and visual deconstruction. My initial work, deeply rooted in classical aesthetics, focused on the creation of studio portraits inspired by the sculptures of ancient Greece. In this first phase, I sought to capture visual perfection by rigorously mastering light, composition and the direction of his models.

Influenced by the harmony and balance of ancient sculptural forms, I shaped my images with extreme attention to detail, favoring sought-after poses and carefully controlled lighting. This approach gave my portraits a timeless dimension, where each model appeared frozen in an idealized, almost divine posture. The mastery of shadows and contrasts allowed me to highlight the structure of faces and bodies, thus reinforcing the effect of living statues. This studio work, characterized by a refined and symmetrical aesthetic, aimed at a quest for perfection that was both technical and artistic.

Dans cette démarche évolutive, il ne s’agit plus de capturer la beauté idéalisée d’un corps dans sa globalité, mais plutôt de proposer une lecture fragmentée et texturée de l’image

However, over the years, I have gradually questioned this classical vision to move towards a more experimental and contemporary approach. In my recent collection "Corps et Matière, L'Étreinte de l'intemporel", I revisit my own works by deconstructing the principles that structured my initial work. It is no longer about capturing the idealized beauty of a body in its entirety, but rather about proposing a fragmented and textured reading of the image.

To do this, I use layers of textures that alter the original purity of my photographs. These textures, sometimes subtle, sometimes more marked, introduce a tactile and organic dimension, evoking the patina of time on ancient sculptures or the materiality of ancient frescoes eroded by the centuries. The framing, once centered and symmetrical, becomes tighter, even radical, enclosing certain parts of the body in abstract and dynamic compositions.

A key element of this new direction is the treatment of colors. Rather than sticking to natural or monochrome tones, I experiment with chromatic superposition games. I thus create atmospheres where colors mix and interact, adding multiple levels of reading to his images. This approach gives my works a more subjective dimension, where emotion takes precedence over simple formal representation.

One of the most radical aspects of this new phase lies in my choice to hide or exclude the models' faces. By erasing this essential identification marker, I free the image from any personalization, thus allowing the viewer to project themselves freely into the work. The body becomes a field of plastic exploration where each fragment tells its own story, detached from any specific individuality. This approach is part of a desire to transcend personal identity to achieve a form of universality, where the human merges into matter and light.

This artistic evolution reflects a deeper reflection on the very nature of photography and its relationship to time. If, in his early days, Claude Gauthier sought to immortalize the perfection of a frozen moment, he now seems to want to deconstruct this fixity to reveal its fragility and transformation. Through this new aesthetic, he questions the memory of the image, the way in which it changes and reinvents itself over the years.

Thus, by revisiting his own photographic archives under a more abstract and textured prism, Gauthier offers a reflection on the impermanence of beauty. He no longer rests on capturing perfection, but now explores imperfections, alterations and metamorphoses, thus offering a new and profoundly contemporary vision of his art. The new deconstructed works are printed on a variety of textured papers to amplify the treatment of the image.

Through this approach, I seek to make beauty accessible rather than create a cold and elitist distance. By giving my images a messy and random appearance, I bring them closer to reality and the viewer's sensory experience. This aesthetic choice aims to abolish the barriers between the work and its audience, allowing everyone to project their own emotions and interpretations onto it. By accepting imperfection and transformation as essential components of beauty, we discover a new perception of the sublime, more human and spontaneous.

En acceptant l’imperfection et la transformation comme des composantes essentielles de la beauté, l'image offre une nouvelle perception du sublime, plus humaine et spontanée, plus accessible.

By playing with fragmentation and deconstruction, I invite a more instinctive and less intellectualized reading of my works. Far from a rigid and fixed aestheticism, my work is anchored in a dynamic where photography becomes dynamic, imperfect, evolving. I thus suggest a more inclusive beauty, where irregularities, traces and visual accidents become constitutive elements of the sublime. This approach also aims to desacralize photographic art by inscribing it in a more spontaneous, almost tactile register, where the viewer's perception fluctuates according to his own experience and sensitivity.

By accepting imperfection and transformation as essential components of beauty, I invite the observer to a new perception of the sublime, more human and spontaneous. It is no longer a question of contemplating a perfect and distant image, but of feeling it fully, of diving into it and seeing a reflection of our own existence, made of contrasts, evolutions and nuances. Through this renewed vision, I seek to reconcile art and raw emotion, offering an aesthetic that is no longer content to seduce the eye, but seeks above all to touch the soul.

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The collection "Body and Matter, The Embrace of the Timeless" will be presented

in Montreal in spring 2025.