Ado Canadian, b. 1991

Ado, alias Jean‑Martin Gagnon, based in Montreal, Canada, is a contemporary artist and filmmaker whose work investigates the intersections of nostalgia, technology, imperfection, and digital experience. Emerging from the aesthetics of glitch art, Ado manipulates video, images, and digital data to create visually arresting pieces that foreground distortion, color, and chaotic beauty. His approach celebrates the expressive potential of error and decay in digital media, challenging the modern fixation on clarity and technical perfection and inviting viewers to reconsider how we engage with images in the digital age.

A central preoccupation in Ado’s work is the human form, particularly explored through a series of nude works that draw on forgotten or discarded digital sources. By using vintage media—often sourced from obsolete formats or overlooked archives, including imagery from closed video rental stores—he recontextualizes and transforms these fragments, offering a nuanced critique of the commodification of the body and the impact of digital culture on representation and desire. Through his process of disruption and reassembly, Ado’s practice blurs the boundaries between abstraction and figuration, questioning the relationship between digital memory and human experience.

International and local recognition has accompanied Ado’s career as he continues to exhibit his work in galleries and contemporary art contexts. His pieces invite audiences to find elegance in entropy, turning glitches and data corruption into poetic visual experiences that contrast with the sharp, polished imagery that dominates contemporary media. As digital technologies evolve, Ado’s art retains a raw and unpolished sensibility that foregrounds the beauty of imperfection and positions his work at the forefront of contemporary explorations of digital aesthetics.