Philippe Cognée
Territoires
Painter Philippe Cognée, one of the most important French artists of his generation, is exhibiting his work for the first time in Brussels, at Galerie Daniel Templon. The exhibition features a previously unseen series of urban landscapes under surveillance.
Philippe Cognée has spent the last twenty years exploring the possibilities of “thinning away the image”. He has developed a wholly original practice that starts with a photographed image – digital, video or taken with a camcorder or telephone – which he then uses to create canvases that verge on the abstract. They are based on paint mixed with wax that is heated and crushed, producing a blurred yet shimmering effect. Philippe Cognée’s artistic journey has led him to encounter a reality that is both stark and commonplace, a reality made up of motorways, suburbs, industrial abattoirs, supermarket shelves and recycling plants.
He draws on this encounter to paint a remarkable portrait of a reality described by Guy Tosatto as “signposted and indefinable”. Philippe Cognée questions the role of painting in a society where the internet and new digital technologies have ushered in the era of the image, both omnipresent and diminished. In response to the sweeping but vague views of the world offered by systems such as Google, satellite surveillance and the proliferation of images taken by mobile devices, Philippe Cognée explores the power of painting to transcend the ordinariness of daily life.
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The artist
Philippe Cognée was born in 1957 in Nantes, France, where he lives and works. His paintings use wax that is heated and crushed, producing a blurred effect and raising questions such as the thinning away of the image and the human condition in the light of humans’ relationship to their urban environment. The artist draws inspiration from photos and videos of elements such as motorways, buildings and aerial shots. His work questions the role of art in a society where new digital technologies have ushered in the era of the image, both omnipresent and diminished.
