Louis Dazy, Monachopsis: the subtle art of not belonging

There is a kind of nostalgia with no clear origin, belonging neither to the past nor the future. A melancholy that arises when everything around us seems to move in order, while something inside moves out of sync. It’s a feeling hard to explain, yet instantly recognizable. Louis Dazy has chosen to name it “Monachopsis”: a made-up word, yet more real than many others.

A conversation with Louis Dazy

Louis Dazy’s work is a visual portal into fleeting moments—memories caught between reality and dreams, nostalgia and the unknown. His art captures cinematic stills from a film that was never made, where emotions linger like neon reflections on rain-slicked streets. Influenced by the aesthetics of the 1950s and 1980s, his imagery is drenched in red—a color that pulses with passion, mystery, and longing. At the heart of his compositions, a portrait often emerges: a woman lost in thought, wrapped in an atmosphere of melancholy or introspection. These figures exist within layered compositions, where reflections distort time, and different stories intertwine within the same frame. Dazy is drawn to duality—past and present, light and shadow, seen and unseen. His images frequently evoke the sensation of looking through a window into something intimate yet unreachable, a world suspended between reality and illusion. Through photography, AI, animation, and videography, he explores the intersection of human emotion and the surreal, creating visual poetry that invites the viewer to step into a dream.

A Mirror with a Front Lawn

Wandering through the immaculate unease of Hayden’s The Suburbs by Carlo Borloni