Opening: Saturday, October 21, 2-8pm

French painter Philippe Cognée returns to Galerie Daniel Templon with a spectacular new series of works inspired by the notion of « vanitas ». Distorted self-portraits respond to brightly colored fields of skulls, creating a disturbing connection between macabre and celebration of life.

At 48, Philippe Cognée counts as one of the most well known French painters today. Over the last fifteen years, he has been developing a unique oeuvre inspired by the most mundane aspects of reality. Using video and photography, he documents everyday life – crowds, libraries, supermarkets, skyscrapers – which serves as an inspiration for his strangely blurred, fading images on canvas. Mixing his pigments with wax, he melts the surface of the paintings with an iron, giving them a skin-like smoothness. Through these smudged, blurred, distorted views of the world, Philippe Cognée questions our modern condition as well as the nature of gaze and memory.

Since 2003 and his last exhibition at Galerie Templon, his work has greatly expanded. The artist gave up cityscapes, which had been his leitmotiv, to focus on darker themes: towers about to crumble down, industrial slaughterhouses, wastelands, illogical aerial views. This new exhibition further explores his fascination for « waste, disorder, accumulation, or post-consumption ». Obsessed with the idea of loss and vanishing, Philippe Cognée creates “vanitas”, but of a radically different nature. They are now colorful and baroque. They evoke Cezanne’s still lives, James Ensor’s carnivals, Andy Warhol’s flashy silk screens.

Philippe Cognée recently had several important museum solo shows: « Urbanographies », at the Fondation Salomon (trough October 29, 2006), « Carcasses », at the MAMCO of Geneva (June 9 – September 17, 2006) and « Transit » at the Musée des Beaux-arts, in Angers (2005). This fall he also exhibited at the French Institute in Berlin (September 22 – October 17), as part of « Art France Berlin ». A bilingual (english/french) monograph surveying the artist work will be released by the end of the year by Bärtschi-Salomon, Geneva. Philippe Cognée’s work is in numerous public and corporate collections including Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris ; Fonds national d’art contemporain, Paris, Fundacao Berardo, Portugal, Microsoft Art Collection, Seattle ; Ludwig Museum, Aachen ; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.

Address : Galerie Daniel Templon, 30 rue Beaubourg, 75003 Paris
(entrance in courtyard)
Hours : Monday - Saturday, 10 a.m - 7 p.m
Web : www.danieltemplon.com
Upcoming exhibitions : CLAUDE VIALLAT, December 2, 2006 – January 15, 2007
JAN FABRE, January 19 – February 25, 2007
Contact : Anne-Claudie Coric, director [email protected]