Montreal, Canada based visual artist Katherine Melançon brings a new energy to the classic still life in her trippy photographic works. Though her mesmerizing images may look it, they are not entirely digital; they are created using a variety of processes and techniques achieved with digital tools and camera-less photography such as photograms. As in her “Nature Morte” series, subjects like flowers, fruits, chicken, and other inanimate subjects are moved while she is scanning them, creating an ephemeral effect with smoky smudges. Images like these exist at a cross-section between traditional art making and a more contemporary practice that uses machines, as well as figurative and abstraction. She says, “My work attempts to ask: what if the world is not really as we see it? This is translated in my work by questioning the materials to create new connections: projecting light on carbonic gas or laying meat on a scanner, therefore blurring the macro and the micro, blending representation and abstraction, showing the organic organized as it is inorganic unraveling the result of their contamination. This questioning is embedded in my work process, a continuous loop between experimentation and results.”
