GAËTAN TROTTIER - Download PDF here
Trottier works instinctively, without any preconceived ideas, with spontaneous, brisk and uncontrolled gestures. He chooses aimlessness, provoked accidents becoming privileged means of expression for the subconscious, the liberation of raw emotions, the empirical expression that gives life to his « irrational self ».
His art is the inevitable manifestation of inner reality, his subconscious being. Sensitivity and fantasy, escaping in reverie and the unreal take precedence over order and rationality.
His definition of art is a process rather than a final product. Emotions are expressed with passion by impulsive and spontaneous actions of contrasting outbursts. The very act of creation becomes more important than the actual work of art. The finished object is part of the creation process, its only purpose to be a transitional intermediate, the concrete expression of his emotions. It is a manifestation of immoderate excess, of passion and madness that opposes reason.
Trottier gives shape to his shapeless subconscious. By materializing his fantasies, he can share them with the observer that can, in turn, see himself reflected, letting himself be taken away in his own reverie and vision. This intimate and privileged relation is the magical mystery of the act of creation and its transmission.
Born in Montréal, in 1944, Trottier is quickly influenced by the existentialists and is instantly drawn to the views and principles of the Refus globals Automatists. He is attracted by the liberation of the subconscious that brings surrealism, the releasing of the mind. His natural preference for baroque is encouraged by the principal art movements of his time : abstract expressionism, action painting, lyrical abstraction. Styles that appeal to him and will be of great influence throughout his artistic process. His work is gestural, instinctive, fed by the involuntary act of form creation. He works with fervor, inspired by anguish and brute force that brings out the angst from his inner reality.
