Philippe Favier - Les Baleines bleues
Les baleines bleues. Behind this exotic title hides Philippe Favier’s new series: a sort of walk, an amused wander around an item generally absent in the contemporary art world, the bra. Behind its deceitfully naughty reference, the series is mainly an exploration of form and material. The bra is here reduced to a mere heap, or more precisely, a transparent pattern on a white or black screenprinted background. Transparent and negative, this pattern becomes the medium for diverse collages the artist varies from one piece to another. Made of laces, pieces of female garments and paint highlights, with their arabesques and preciosity, the collages become pattern within the pattern, like infinite variations that oppose the beauty of the material to the mattness of screenprint.
Can we talk about originals for this 24 edition series? Probably; such is the time that the artist spent on each edition, refining the golden bronze reflections of the hemstitched lace or piling up taffetas to create fine transparency effects. These original pieces complete the work on glass Phillipe Favier had started in the 1990s and almost abandoned since then.
| Reference | Les Baleines bleues |
| Size | 24 x 35 x 5 cm |
| Edition | unique pieces |
| Technique | Black glass box, Screenprint on glass, Fabric and lace collage |
| Publication date | 2018 |
Favier (Philippe)
In Europe’s artistic scene, Philippe Favier is an example of a singular practice which has no real equivalent. Born in 1957, he has, since the 1980's, produced paintings where the motif becomes a simple ornamentation of a wider whole, without visible hierarchy and without any particular construction apart from the fact that it creates an off-camera, both physical and mental. There is in this artist, the idea that art should, above all, activate imagination. To achieve this he does not hesitate to introduce fascinating little figures, sometimes multiplied to infinity. Using the theme of vanities, death and skeletons, he fills his pages with ordinary but surprising objects that alternate with intriguing otherworld images. The important point for him, is that the book, the images, the story-path, are to be read and deciphered. The work is a synthesis between the pages full of crypto glyphs, and the page after-page succession of possible readings. Philippe Favier builds impossible works, without beginning, without end, without orientation, without any destination other than to lead us into unsuspected depths in our imagination. Time stretches, lengthens to infinity, takes different forms according to how we read.
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