Philippe Cognée

Philippe Cognée is a French artist born in 1957 in Nantes, where he today lives and works. He graduated form the Beaux-Arts School of Nantes in 1932 and won the prize of Rome in 1991. He teaches at the Beaux-Arts School of Angers and of Paris. He appeared on the art scene at the beginning of the eighties. He is part of the return to painting movement and distinguishes himself for a pictorial technique of it's own. Indeed, he takes pictures or films his subjects, projects pieces of deconstructed images and re assembled on a canvas that he paints with encaustic painting made with beeswax and pigments. He then uses a plastic film to cover the canvas, and an iron to melt the wax that by spreading on the support (canvas or wood) deforms the images and creates a blurring effect and impression of depth. This so particular technique, and the effect produced, is the stylistic signature of the artist. Philippe Cognée represents things of our daily life that may seem banal (that the artist magnifies) with a pronounced interest in architecture. Since 2000, he has been working on the consumer society theme, with the representation of supermarkets, emblem of contemporary consumerism; and since 2006 he has been using Google Street as his favorite bank of image to discover unsuspected places of the world, and studies their architectural particularities. His works of art have been exposed in France (FRAC Auvergne, 2015), in Belgium (Daniel Templon Gallery, 2015), in Germany (French Institute 2006) or even in the United-States (Winston Wätcher Gallery, 2001).