Philippe Haniez

An abstraction and aesthetic resulting from light and shadow, between rigidity and fluidity, derived from matter. That's how we might sum up Philippe Haniez's creative output. The entire Art Traffik team has fallen in love with this artist, whose work is still confidential for the moment, and whose technique is highly original...

Text by ART-TRAFFIK

Philippe's background? He studied architecture, which enabled him to develop his artistic taste for drawing, perspective and techniques. But also, and above all, an approach to and familiarisation with the creative process: understanding the constraints we set ourselves to stimulate our imagination in a search for solutions, with a view to an original creation. He then went on to do a postgraduate degree in science and economics, which eventually led to a career in banking and finance... a far cry from art. Too far, obviously, because after 7 years spent concentrating on his professional life, Philippe Haniez felt the desire, not to say the need, to create... "There must have been something missing for me," he says. There must have been something missing for me. From my architecture studies, I retained a taste for drawing and creating, which I did very occasionally for friends who asked me for advice on their home or interior design projects, but that was really not enough.

This lack that led him to create. He remembers, and tells me: "On the one hand, without really knowing why, I've always had a mania for keeping things, things.I don't like throwing things away. I used to fill jars with old paper, like candy wrappers, cakes and cigarette packets. I kept my old ties and refused to throw away old sheets, tablecloths or scarves.On the other hand, I bought a roll of chicken wire because I needed a frame for my playground.A grid made of tiny squares.The figure of the square has always been important to me, reminding me of my years as an architect.Because it's both an extraordinary support that can contain the circle, the triangle; but also a constraint like the walls of a cell from which you want to escape.So I started assembling, sewing and stapling what I kept at home onto this wire mesh support.I really enjoyed it. I never stopped".

Without knowing it, Philippe Haniez created his first works. His pleasure is in creating, in exploring new materials and, for each, their possibilities, according to their resistance, elasticity, rigidity or flexibility... Always according to the same principle of meticulous assembly on this support. He puts the pieces he likes best at home.