30E4, 1991

Philippe Venin-Bernard  

"Initially, says Philippe Venin-Bernard, it is the dissatisfaction of painting without kneading the volumes and that of sculpting without playing with colors". This dissatisfaction offers him a program and he decides quite arbitrarily to take a volume as simple as a cone and overlay it with an unrelated painting. The volume was abstract and the painting figurative. Thus were born the artist's anamorphoses in 1986. He chose himself as masters Dürer and Holbein and decided to visit the cities of his heart: Madrid, Venice, Paris. He thus realizes vast constructions where the buildings he loves are represented. Also, he looks at mythology and distorts its large icons. Anamorphosis is a deformation according to very precise geometric rules and, since Piero della Francesca, a way of perverting perspective. Philippe Venin-Bernard builds volumes with canvas and paints away from scenes and figures as his eye has integrated these rules of deformation. Sometimes he constructs anamorphoses in marquetry, the image of which is reproduced in a mirror. Master of trompe-l'oeil, monumental works can be found in the Toulon museum, the Issoudun museum in Paris, the Galliera museum and the Carnavalet museum. In 1988, at the Center Georges Pompidou, he produced an important installation on the theme of Bordeaux châteaux. He died at the age of 35 in 1995.