For thirty years now, Didier Mignot has followed a career apart, to which no man could adhere, an artist who, as he says himself, likes to work by distorting and exploring parallel worlds, to the limit of provocation.
Didier Mignot defines himself as an autodidact. A photographer, he works colour into his Black & White shots and, little by little, he has created a real, very personal, technique for himself, with the help of coloured ink. He literally repaints the landscapes of his imagination.
His colours are, in turn, strong, contrasting, excessive and symbolic, real stimulations as much for the eye as for the imagination. It is impossible to put a label on such unusual work. It is true that the importance of colour and light is predominant and a certain liberated dialogue of the unconscious emerges from his work, but it is also true that these hint at much more contemporary references.
He colours his photographs, in the real sense of the term as much as in the figurative sense, with references to the world of childhood, to the literature of fairy tales, Arthurian legends, not to mention the voyage of initiation of Nemo by Windsor McCay in the maze of Slumberland, all with colourful architecture, either marvellous or alarming. Beyond a healing or ironic dream, Didier Mignot transposes a modern and, sometimes, frightening world, generating fears, a potential source of contemporary myths.
You, who are encountering the painted-photos of Didier Mignot, beware! You are going to step beyond the mirror, you will hear the galloping hooves of merry-go-round horses, become a mystic, who knows? Contemplate the naked women who look like icons, enchanted places where washed-out effervescence makes you think that spirits still roam.
It must be what is called magic.
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