Quentin Montagne

My practice is built on quotation and transposition. I sift through the fields of art history, architecture and mass culture to find elements pertaining to Wonder – wonder in the sense of anything that may help an individual escape their immediate reality, including religion, cinema or utopias. Once these elements are taken out of context, they acquire new levels of interpretation. When abstracted, they become polysemous and hermetic. These pieces all lie at the intersection of several ideas, several references, and require a certain degree of deciphering on the viewer’s part. Various interventions, some of which relate to the ways the pieces are displayed or hung, make the interpretation more straightforward. Documents often play an important part in this process, as if they were leaving a string of clues. While I mostly use painting and drawing, I don’t favour any specific medium other than the exhibition itself, which serves as an implementation of the many possible ways in which the works can be structured. After focusing on underwater themes for several years, my research has now led me to become interested in depictions of nature and, to a greater extent, to question humankind’s relationship with the natural world.