Sans-Titre, 2008

Philippe Favier  

In Europe’s artistic scene, Philippe Favier is an example of a singular practice which has no real equivalent.

Born in 1957, he has, since the 1980's, produced paintings where the motif becomes a simple ornamentation of a wider whole, without visible hierarchy and without any particular construction apart from the fact that it creates an off-camera, both physical and mental. There is in this artist, the idea that art should, above all, activate imagination. To achieve this he does not hesitate to introduce fascinating little figures, sometimes multiplied to infinity. Using the theme of vanities, death and skeletons, he fills his pages with ordinary but surprising objects that alternate with intriguing otherworld images.

The important point for him, is that the book, the images, the story-path, are to be read and deciphered. The work is a synthesis between the pages full of crypto glyphs, and the page after-page succession of possible readings. Philippe Favier builds impossible works, without beginning, without end, without orientation, without any destination other than to lead us into unsuspected depths in our imagination. Time stretches, lengthens to infinity, takes different forms according to how we read.