Contact
Steven Gagnon, Visual Artist
305 528 6405
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
www.youtube.com/sdgmia73

Miami Beach, FL, July 5, 2008 - Steven Gagnon is a visual alchemist who strives to convey precious insights through the unconventional synthesis of familiar images and objects by extracting their symbolic essence.  As the visual elements involved determine the artistic experimentation’s success, he is driven to find what most effectively communicates the emotion and complexity of his inspiration.  This focus spurned his artwork’s evolution from hanging on a wall to requiring a tag, driver’s license, and insurance.  This metamorphosis is best observed in his video installations in cars created in Berlin, New York, and Miami and exhibited internationally at ArtCologne and FotoFest 2008.  

This transition began in 2005 when he realized his Eins Werden video sculpture in Berlin.  The work’s genesis dates from 1992 while studying in Heidelberg, he pondered how to portray modern Germany.  To symbolize its re-unification, he envisioned fusing a West German Mercedes Benz’s front end to an East German Trabant rear end.  On this structure’s windows, images from after World War II to the Berlin Wall’s fall are projected from inside and audio of historical figures are heard.  After working six months, the project was exhibited for the country’s15th anniversary as one nation and is now in a private U.S. collection.  

His first large-scale international project complete, Gagnon returned home in 2006 to tackle a historical piece of great personal significance, presenting his deceased grandparents’ love letters.  The correspondences dated from the 1936 winter season in Miami Beach where his grandfather worked as a mechanic while his fiancée remained in New England.  Referencing the period and his grandfather’s profession, the letters are read in a 1930 Ford while images of Miami Beach from this era are projected on the car’s windows.  Time Machine was exhibited at Fountain Miami 06, PalmBeach3, and Palm Beach! art fairs, Miami Beach’s Sleepless Night cultural festival, and acquired by Parisian art collector, Jean Cherqui.  

For Fountain NY 07 art fair, Gagnon created a video installation in an actual New York taxi.  The project illustrates that while riding in a cab, one can chat with someone from the other side of the world.  Projected from inside onto the windows, excerpts of fourteen different interviews with cab drivers are shown on the driver and passenger front windows while the other display images of the Big Apple as if sitting inside the car.  Around the World in a NYC Taxi debut was written up in numerous online art magazines and invited to ArtCologne.  In Germany, the taxi received international attention and was reviewed in ArtNet.com.  

While working on his Taxi project, Gagnon meet many illegal immigrants and learned firsthand the dangers they confront to work in the U.S.  He was moved to bring awareness and add dignity to their plight.  Technically, Gagnon was motivated to create a drivable video sculpture as his previous projects are all stationary displays.  His Border Cruiser, a mobile video installation in a former police car achieved all his aims.  In its rear windows, a Brazilian tells of entering the U.S. illegally and his ordeals once here.  The project was featured at Fountain Miami 07 and Bridge Miami 07 art fairs as well as Locust Projects.  In Houston, the Art Car Museum presented it for FotoFest 2008, a citywide photo and video biennial.  

###

If you would like to have further information, please contact Steven Gagnon via e-mail This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it   or phone 305 528 6405.  www.stevengagnon.com