[2] The city’s flourishing experimental avant-garde fascinated him and contributed to the development of his approach:[3] He was in New York during the time when artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns were detaching themselves from Abstract Expressionism.
[5] He had begun incorporating letters and numbers into his paintings in New York, but now began to create large square and rectangular chromatic fields that seem to nestle into one another.
The particular interest of this series, entitled Gap Paintings, lies in the spatial ambiguity caused by the interplay of formal opposites – between the straight line and splashes of paint or gestural strokes, between the flatness of the coloured surfaces and the sense of depth created by their superimposition.
[6] The Gap series (1962-1963) also had a landscape dimension, as suggested by green areas and vistas into the pictorial space.
[1] Gagnon began his teaching career at Loyola College (now Concordia University) in Montreal.
[9] Gagnon's daughter is writer, cultural critic, curator, and educator Monika Kin Gagnon,[12] whose work explores race, ethnicity, and gender in media, alternative media, and the cultural effects of globalization.