Philippe Favier / Réveillez vo’ cueurs endormis

Since its beginnings in the early 1980s, Philippe Favier's work has been marked by the question of utopia and heterotopia: he never ceases to create, on scales ranging from the minuscule to the monumental, worlds that don't exist. But these worlds could exist or emerge from somewhere else, reflecting our personal memory and the ability of our imagination to stitch together memories in the face of any image. Philippe Favier loves these shifts, these leaps between the objects of the past that form the fabric of his works and our ability to bring arrangements of signs up to date through perception. This abundant creation proceeds with tenderness and concern for reality. With a humour that is sometimes grating, even funereal, but which he defuses with slight shifts that introduce doubt about what is visible. Refusing to be nostalgic, these works also attest to our fragility in the face of the inevitable disappearance or, more accurately, scattering of what we thought was immutable. His latest works, ‘Réveillez vo’ cueurs endormis", feature boxes imagined as precious reliquaries or the carefully archived documents of scientists. They are all based on a collection of 19th-century engravings listing various species of birds, both local and exotic, some of which have already disappeared... The precise representations of the birds are delicately treated and brought to life with coloured feathers, copper wire highlights, punching and drawings. In its presentation, the work is accompanied by and responds to a musical piece by Clément Janequin (1485-1558): ‘Le chant des oiseaux’ (‘Birdsong’) to words by Ronsard. Composed in four verses, this polyphonic song is a virtuoso display of the song of the sansonnet, the nightingale and the cuckoo. Through this interplay between seeing and hearing, Philippe Favier creates a diffraction between Janequin's noisy melody and the sensual poetry of the enhanced engravings. About ten creations are available for sale at a price of €4,500 each.