Carl Trahan's research focuses on the historical connections between politics, philosophy, literature, and the visual arts, and their resonance in the contemporary context. Between 2017 and 2019, he developed Das Gleitende — 1, 2 and 3, a trilogy of exhibitions that addresses the crises of modernity and evokes the erosion of the sacred as well as the sense of splintering and emptiness that gradually took hold in the West in the 19th century, in addition to the anguish that the spectre of decadence and chaos henceforth inspires. In subsequent body of work La nuit est aussi un soleil, the artist examines the influence of spiritual and occult movements in the emergence of abstract art around 1900, an art form whose practice was at that time motivated by a desire for regeneration. In continuation with this work, his current research deals with negation as well as the conception of a world-without-us; a speculative, spectral, impersonal and horrifying world in which the human species has gone extinct; more than ever before, this is now a world that is easier for us to imagine.

Carl Trahan has exhibited his work at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, who awarded him their Prix en art actuel in 2016, the Musée d'art contemporain des Laurentides and the Musée d'art de Joliette. His works are in the collections of the MNBAQ, the MAJ, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. He is represented by Nicolas Robert Gallery.