Aurélie Philippe

Beauty is in the viewer's gaze, but also the expression of a gaze. How to portray modesty, hope, expectation, nostalgia, but also strength and fragility in images? That was the whole challenge.

The series by artist Aurélie Philippe exhibited at the Bastide du Clos des Roses is a hymn to the beauty of facial expressions. It wants to be aesthetic and elegant. Because an artist must above all be an esthete and his role is to encapsulate, crystallize the beauty that surrounds him.

This beauty is first present in humans. This series is also an ode to femininity. Beauty lies in the diversity of traits and characteristics of humanity. For the moment, all his attention has been focused on a part of the world where the artist has lived for a while: Asia and in particular China. It was there that she came to deeply love the diversity, the richness, the plurality of cultures, but above all to love people, humanity in its most beautiful: difference. By dint of travel and wonderful encounters with people from remote villages, Aurélie became fascinated by the ethnic style that characterizes minorities in Asia.

In these works, the colors are warm and flamboyant, the style is elaborated with meticulousness. It is his training to designate textiles that explains this attraction for textures, materials, embroidery, ornamentation or even the richness of colored nuances. In the traditional costumes of Asia, this richness is present. It could well be from the Baroque period, with a hint of romanticism. The background is dark and contrasted, like a velvet case, to highlight the portrait itself and the expression of the face carrying an emotion or an attribute. This is why the titles “the elegance of modesty”, “the portrait of nostalgia” or “the grace of porcelain”.