When it comes to mainstream fine art there are certain characteristics, features and concepts that one expects to encounter – even to the extremes of minimalism and abstraction as well as the darkest depths of sexuality and violence.  So when an artist produces a body of work that sits uncomfortably outside the prevailing cultural zeitgeist, it is worth taking a look no matter how disconcerting the experience may be.

The first ever artist in residence at Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), French artist Yannick Demmerle is best known for his large scale photography of hauntingly beautiful forests in Europe and Australia as well as his of empty animal cages in European zoos.

In a radical shift in his artistic practice, Yannick has used his residency at MONA, which began in January, to explore a new medium as well as a new method of self expression.  Working in pencil to produce large scale work on paper, the resulting body of work is a highly visceral and ingenuous investigation into the visual communication of obsession, emotion and intuition.

Channelling the untrained and obsessive artists of art brut and outsider art movements, Yannick’s drawings challenge the viewer accept a more truthful and pure form of artistic expression than they are likely to be familiar with and comfortable with - art for art’s sake as opposed to art for the sake of the viewer.

Rendered with a raw, childlike energy and enthusiasm, Yannick’s fantastic dreamscapes are evocative in their imagery yet wonderfully fragile in their physical composition.  Starkly confident and deftly rendered images of nightmarish creatures appear amongst complex hypnotic patterns to recall the sort of emotions, images, feelings and sensations that involuntarily occur while we sleep.

By weaving the curled-up human foetuses, grotesque horse-like creatures and ejaculating penises that abruptly appear in his works into the vividly decorative fabric of his whimsical compositions, what could easily be defined as repulsive and disgusting appears strangely innocent and harmless – an experience akin to waking from a nightmare and realising it was all an innocent and harmless dream.

The works are raw emotion and for Yannick this is all the viewer needs to know. “I love being obsessed,” he says. “There’s no choice for me. My work is not a hobby. It’s a necessity.  It takes blowing off everything for your artwork…the family money, security, happiness, friends.”

Yannick was born in 1969 in the northeastern French city of Sarreguemines. He studied art at the Ecole supérieure des arts décoratif, Strasbourg, graduating in 1996. In 2001 Yannick made his first visit to Tasmania in search of the ancient pristine forests no longer found in Europe, returning annually to spend six months hiking alone with his large format cameras. In 2008 he decided to stay as long as he could.

YANNICK DEMMERLE – ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE EXHIBITION, MONA LIBRARY GALLERY – September 19 – December 3, 2012