On Thursday January 28th 2021, PIASA will present at its first (Very) contemporary art auction more than 77 works of art by different artists occupying today's art scene. On this occasion, a canvas painting by the French artist Philippe Cogné will be presented to collectors.
It is from his own photographs that Philippe Cognée produces his paintings. Through his work, he questions the role of painting in a society where the image, under the effect of new technologies, is omnipresent and impoverished. He gives particular importance to gesture and experimentation, while seeking a certain abstraction to question the limits of our environment. By blurring his works with heated and then crushed wax, he wishes to transcend everyday banality by giving it a mysterious dimension. Inspired by familiar and banal views of his environment, he paints haunting cities. The grandeur of these canvases creates a face to face between the viewer and the world. No character invades his canvases, the urban environment having as it were exhausted the human condition.
Philippe Cognée (né en 1957)
Medina, 2009
Estimate: 20000 / 30000 €
The painting offered in this sale is from the Medinas series, inspired by aerial views from Google earth. Like his paintings of crowds, a multitude of recurring motifs inhabit the entire pictorial surface and move the subject towards a hypnotic abstraction. The spatial treatment of the canvas of his Medinas inspired by satellite photos, however, cannot help but evoke the organised multitude of motifs of oriental carpets.
Philippe Cognée's work has been the subject of numerous personal exhibitions in French and European institutions and is part of public collections such as: Assemblée Nationale, Paris, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, Fondation d'art contemporain Daniel et Florence Guerlain, Les Mesnuls, France, Fondation pour l'art contemporain Claudine et Jean-Marc Salomon, Alex, France, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Institut Bernard Magrez, Bordeaux, Axa Art, Belgium, European Central Bank, Frankfurt, Microsoft Art Collection, Seattle.
