THOMAS DEVAUX France, b. 1980

Thomas Devaux, born in 1980, lives and works in Paris. Devaux is a fine art photographer who has created several complex series in which both the founding values and current developments of photography come into play. His photographic work, which is close to painting and drawing, enables him to pursue his research into the themes of the sacred and the profane.

Thomas Devaux current work centers on an ensemble entitled Cet Obscur Objet du Désir (Obscure Object of Desire), divided into three series of photographs: The Shoppers, Rayons and Dichroics. Through these works, he questions the new transcendences of the contemporary world.

In The Shoppers, Thomas Devaux captures the faces of supermarket customers as they check out. In Rayons, he completes his critical vision of the consumer world by reappropriating the codes of abstract painting. The series brings together photographs of supermarket stalls, blurred to produce large flat areas of color with indecisive contours, articulated together in a contemplative gradation of light, the whole set with a fine gold-leaf frame. In his Dichroics series, created by mixing dichroic glass with photographs, the work this time obeys a more vertical, mirrored composition that integrates the viewer's body by melting it into the color. The physical and formal confrontation with the viewer reveals a buried element: the magical primitivism crystallized by the totem form.

Cet Obscur Objet du Désir (This Obscure Object of Desire) appears as a plastic fable through which the public can become aware of its own consumption.

His work is part of prestigious private and public collections, including that of the BNF. He was nominated for Arte's "Prix Art Contemporain" in 2011 and won the Bourse du Talent the same year. He gave a lecture at the prestigious Rencontres d'Arles evenings at the Théâtre Antique in 2013, and several documentaries have been made about his work and screened at the European House of Photographies and the Centquatre in 2016. Every year, he takes part in numerous exhibitions and major international fairs.