Biography

Emmanuel Monzon is a photographer and visual artist based in Seattle, WA. He graduated from the Academy of Beaux-Arts in Paris, France with honors. His work has been featured throughout the US, Europe and Asia (through exhibitions, selections and various awards). Through his work, he explores and questions the signs of urban sprawl in our visual field. His photographic process is being influenced by his background as a plastic artist. 

COLLECTION: ESSEL COLLECTION- Karlheinz Essl, founder of the ESSL Museum.

INFO GALLERY: sizes -30x30 inches (1/3+ 1AP) -20x20 inches (1/15) - Print: Canson Arches Infinity Watercolor Paper (acid free) .

Direct Studio: 16x16 inches (1/30).

Representation:

ARTSY.NET. Gallery RKG, Toronto, CA

ARTSY.NET. Gallery CHARBON HK 

Publications

Selection: Lensculture, Feature shoot, Rolling Stone.it (Black Camera), AINT-BAD, AESTHETICA Magazine, C.41 Magazine, BROAD Magazine,  F-stop, All About Photo, L'Oeil de la Photographie, Fisheye Magazine, Phroom, Subjectively Objective, GUP, LENSCRATCH, Creative Boom, Musee Magazine New York, THE FACE Magazine, Float Photo, Pellicola, Dodho, EYESHOT Magazine, ARTDOC  Photography magazine, Photovogue, FUTURE NOW,  Artslant,  Keen on, Lamono, LENTA.RU (Russia) Bokeh Bokeh, Be-Art, South China Morning Post,  Wobneb,  Pool Resources,  Life Style Asia, La Stampa, Profiles in Photography, Photo/Foto Magazine, Paradise, Panorama, Eye Photo, Der Spiegel, MSN.com:Russia, #photography Magazine, AAP Magazine, Artoronto, Mystery Tribune Mag, DART International, Seen magazine, We and the Color, INAG, ARTWORT Magazine, International Photography Magazine, Loosenart, OZON Magazine, The  Collective, Landscapestories, The Street Photographers Foundation, Art Vibes, Edge of Humanity Magazine,  A Guide to Creating your Photo Project, by Artdoc, Banal Magazine, Us of America, LIBERATION (Mentioned by Vincent Delerm). Photodom,  Hunter Urban Review. WILDSAM: Southwest Art.





Artist Statement

Through my urban sprawl series I am asking myself : am I leaving a city or entering a new environment?

I like to play/'mix' two approaches: The codes of the new topographics and the concept of "in between-two states" inspired by the anthropologist Marc Auge under the name of non-places. I like transitional places, like intersections or passages from one world to another, such as from a residential area to an industrial area. I also like the tourist places altered by the human trace. We often find this feeling of emptiness, of visual paradox by travelling throughout the United States. The transition from one site to the next: You have arrived and at the same time you have never left. I believe that the expansion of the urban or industrial landscape in the American natural landscape has redefined this space and has become itself a "non-place."

In my artwork there is no judgment, no denunciation, only the picture itself. If I could sum up the common theme of my photos, it would be about emptiness, about silence. My pictures try to extract from the mundane urban landscape a form of estheticism. Where most people only pass through, I stop and look for some form of poetic beauty. I like repetition, I like series, and I like driving around.

"There are several common threads woven throughout Emmanuel’s photography. First, he only uses square frames to create a strong focus on the subject, and second, his photos always contain manmade structures or objects, but never any actual people. These two elements combine to cause viewers to perceive a deep void in the photos; an almost post-apocalyptic sense of isolation. By displaying structures humans built to serve their own needs, but in a rare state of absolute idleness, Emmanuel creates an eerily disconcerting environment. Looking at the photos, you can almost hear the chilly silence that’d accompany them." .Press.

"Trained as a painter,Emmanuel Monzon is mindful of the grey texture of his photographs. His empty landscapes reflect his attachment to forms and colours, giving them space to beheard. To me, the series exhibited at Charbon art Space echoes both the human loneliness and the power of things against a lost American backdrop. This shadow looks like a calm rain of grey while one can hear the rustling leaves of the tree…" (Caroline Ha Thuc, contributor ArtPress Magazine)


Gallery PRIVATEVIEW, Turin

ARTSY.NET 

Gallery Charbon Art Space, Hong Kong

Gallery: PRIVATEVIEW, Turin

Gallery: PRIVATEVIEW, Turin

Press Release Gallery Charbon:  ART FAIR ASIA 2018

The work of Emmanuel Monzon focuses primarily on the idea of urban sprawling and the expansion of its periphery. Monzon photographs banality as though it were a Romantic painting, trying only to be “stronger than this big nothing” in controlling the space by framing the subject. His aesthetic of the banal obeys its own rules : a ban on living objects , a precise geometrical organization , and the revelation of a specific physical and mental landscape blurring the lines between city and suburb, between suburb and countryside, a process that results in an independent identity. Monzon thematically consistent work highlights things that make their surroundings appear quite empty and soulless. An unnerving set of social observations. Yet the tenderness of his colouring softens the quite harsh social comment his images tend to deliver. There is an absolute stillness in the images : nothing moves, not even time. Monzon grasps what is simple, and that is difficult.
Emptiness, absence, lack of a meaningful world : subjects are not inherently expressive yet they convey a deep sense of grief over the loss of meaning. Time has come to a stop. The absence of shadows and the pinkish grey mist often give a strong and disturbing impression of dream. Does these places really exist ? The reflection redeems and heals the wounds a mindless world inflicts on reality, and transforms an unstructured and empty present into a bearable memory.

Publication: Featureshoot Magazine: A Photographic Duet of Flesh & Spirit, Earth & Animal

...In the photographs of Antoine D’Agata, the very fabric of the flesh becomes a radiant field of energy, at once murky and diaphanous as though we might dissolve and disintegrate into our spiritual essence for a taste of eternity. In D’agata, we feel an insistent intensity, the impassioned whisper of a wordless truth that knows that pain and pleasure exist like the ouroburo, a snake eating its tail.

In counterpoint is the work of Emmanuel Monzon, which takes us to the very edges of urban sprawl. Here solidity reigns supreme, as “progress” eats its way into the landscape, ignoring the perils of climate change. In Monzon’s work, the see the last moments of the natural landscape, before the earth as it stood for millions of years is desecrated by our limitless desire for expansion. Monzon captures the banality of it all, the essential ugliness of the unstoppable development of the earth.

The soft, beige light of Monzon’s work reads like a sedative, a seductive little pill that lulls us into a false sense of entitlement as it alienates us from our true selves. Here, in this perfectly plastic world of picture perfect harmony, D’agata’s photographs acquire a new layer of depth as we consider his choice of subjects — people who could not go along with illusions we assert in the name of “normalcy.”...

 Exhibition: ENTER THE VOID- Gallery Charbon Art Space- HK

"Trained as a painter,Emmanuel Monzon is mindful of the grey texture of his photographs. His empty landscapes reflect his attachment to forms and colours, giving them space to beheard. To me, the series exhibited at Charbon art Space echoes both the human loneliness and the power of things against a lost American backdrop. This shadow looks like a calm rain of grey while one can hear the rustling leaves of the tree…"

Caroline Ha Thuc

Specialized in Asian contemporary art, she contributes to different magazines such as ArtPress in France and Pipeline/Am Post in Hong Kong.

Gallery RKG, Toronto, Canada

Gallery RKG, Toronto, Canada

Gallery RKG, Toronto, Canada


Using Format