Philippe Cognee

Description

Philippe Cognee is a French artist born in Nantes in 1957. Active since the 1980s, he is one of the artists who marked the return to painting in this period. Cognee is known for his practice of wax painting. He projects the photographed or filmed motifs onto the canvas and paints them on the support with encaustic paint. He then covers the canvas with a plastic film and uses an iron to liquefy the wax. The motifs begin to deform under the heat, creating an effect of blur and depth. This technique allows Cognee to dissolve the represented elements, often blurring the line between figurative painting and abstraction. Urban landscapes, views of supermarkets or slaughterhouses, Google Street View shots - the painter finds his inspiration in what surrounds him. While drawing subjects from everyday life and thanks to his atypical technique, Cognee creates original works in which, through the distortion of reality, he shows a poetic vision of the world.

Marc Donnadieu, exhibition curator, is currently chief curator at the Musee de l'Elysee in Lausanne. Guy Tosatto, art historian and curator, he has been director of the Museum of Grenoble since September 2002. Julie Chaizemartin is a journalist and art critic.