Yoakim Bélanger was born in Montreal in 1977. Trained in graphic design at the Cégep du Vieux-Montréal and the University of Quebec in Montreal, Bélanger chose photography as his first medium of expression. His professional experiences in graphic design, photography and video guided him against all odds to painting. Inspired by the world of multimedia, Yoakim Bélanger's pictorial approach is ever changing. For him, there is no longer a boundary between different mediums, they interact with each other. All his skills and acquired tools serve his approach. We are no longer in a dissociative universe, but associative. This is precisely what gives all its originality to his painting, whose most obvious singularity remains his steel canvases damaged by time and rust, already presenting the first textured traces of the work. The inspired artist begins a silent dialogue with metal and deciphers its secrets.
His work explores in particular the nude, the symbol, the body, or the interior of the soul. The patina of the recovered steel plates on which the bodies take shape brings us back to the mystery of our future: who are we? Yoakim Bélanger seeks to create a new order of balance of the subject in the space of his medium. He likes to work in contrast and this is perhaps what gives his paintings this impression of space where the elements clash in their own paradoxes, those of shadow and light, abstraction and figuration, spirit and matter. "I use the human body as a prism of emotions, colors and light that is not afraid of contradictions." Yoakim Bélanger experiences, sees and creates vibrant tributes to life.