Alain Pratte (2005)

In Dans le sac, Alain Pratte encourages the spectator to imagine the unseen – the meres suggestion of what might be “in the bag.” Without losing sight of the subject, Pratte’s images of discarded plastic bags refer to Marcel Duchamp’s found objects, as well as the serial works of Post-painterly abstraction and Minimalism.

The works of these eight artists playfully revisit the histories of Modern Art, evoking its undiminished power on the Postmodern imagination.

Alain Pratte was born in Shawinigan in 1953. Since 1973 his photographic practice has been situated at the edge of documentary, where images are less descriptive than allusive. His series Poursuite du vent, an attempt to represent the passage of time and the impermanence of things, was included in the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography exhibition Before the Land, Behind the Camera, a show that toured widely in Canada and abroad. In 2003 Pratte participated in Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal with À rebours (2003), a videotape made from found images (1966–75). Pratte lives in Montreal.