Frédéric Duquette makes work that feels like memory before language. His pieces don’t begin with a thesis or a concept locked in a notebook. They begin as impulses and feelings, little sparks realized into form through a practice he describes as deeply personal and intuitive.
“My whole journey was about journaling and making things happen,” he says. “I make art to feel better. I treat this as a diary journal in some ways.”
For Duquette, creating is how he processes life and emotion. He doesn’t map out meaning in advance. He just makes.
“Honestly, zero,” he says when asked about conscious emotion or concept. “Most of the time when I create or make art I just make it without thinking. … Sometimes looking back at pieces from years ago I can feel and understand the emotions I had making that piece.”
That instinctive approach — honest and unfiltered — is part of what gives his work its quiet resonance. It isn’t “about” something so much as it is something: a mood, a pulse, a internal state laid bare through light, shape, and material.
Montreal, too, feeds his rhythm outside the screen or canvas. When asked about his favourite spots in the city, he offers a list that reads like his life in flavors and spaces.
“So many,” he laughs. “I love San Gennaro for their pizza, Pumpui — the tofu curry is so good, Kazu on Sunday for the homemade tofu that’s bomb. There’s too many places I love here in my city. My favorite is obviously Foil Gallery — wink wink.”
Print of the Month at Foil: SOLVED//
This month at Foil, we’re featuring an exclusive release from Frédéric in partnership with PrintThemAll — SOLVED//, his first-ever screenprint.
SOLVED// is a limited-edition, 15-color screenprint, hand cut with deckled edges on Mohawk Superfine UltraWhite paper. It measures 30 x 24 inches, is signed and numbered by the artist, and produced in an edition of just 99 copies.
Visually it brings the hallmarks of Duquette’s language into physical form: three radiant caps rise against a calm field, surfaces that seem mineral or glasslike catching light on the page. It’s a quiet choreography, a translation of his digital aesthetic into a tactile, luminous piece.
The print carries the same contemplative energy you find in his practice — light not just as illumination but as matter. It’s calming and reflective, echoing ideas of growth, resilience, and connection without needing to spell them out.
Available only on PrintThemAll’s website and featured as Foil’s Print of the Month, SOLVED// is a rare opportunity to bring one of his digital visions into your space as a carefully crafted, physical object.