Philippe Favier - Hardingia favieri

Original drawings and graphic compositions from different periods of his fruitful path, revealing the artist’s multiple facets.

For over thirty years, Philippe Favier has enjoyed an important position in the world of art. Rejecting trends, and distancing himself from the familiar, beaten track, he has continued to create a unique, oftentimes dreamlike universe, punctuated by a multitude of humorous or indeed, nostalgic quotations.

The diversity of Philippe Favier’s visual creations, and the multiplicity of the materials used, tend to make his practice one of the most original of our time.

Since 2006, Bernard Chauveau Éditeur and Le Néant Éditeur have been working alongside the artist, producing numerous original creations, the most spectacular being a book/object of over two metres long, with just eight copies published, each having been subsequently modified and enhanced by the artist. This collaboration has since been followed by numerous other productions, each an illustration of the artist’s creative genius: modified photographs, nautical maps transformed into a chimerical landscape…

On the occasion of Drawing Now 2015, the artist Philippe Favier will be exhibited as part of the Solo Show. A rigorous selection made with the artist results in an exhibition showing an ensemble of original drawings and graphic compositions from various periods of his prolific career, thereby revealing the many facets of an artist who defies categorization. Whether he plays with words or signs, with silence or deep blackness, each work invites the viewer to come closer, in an attempt to decipher his riddles that seemingly enjoy undoing the divisions between the written word and the image. Philippe Favier’s work must be looked at, rather than simply seen.

Reference	Favier Hardingia favieri
Size	Varying sizes
Publication date	2015

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.