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2004
Restored Works of Art from the Collection of the Slovak National Gallery. Jan Mertens, wokshop: Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi 1520 - 1530
16. September 2004 - 31. May 2005
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Laureat Grand Prix Insita 2010 - Philippe Azéma INSITA 2010 9th International Triennial of Self-Taught Art He was born in 1956 in Cauderan, France. Philippe Azéma leads two parallel lives: during the day he is an agricultural worker and the rest of the time he is an artist. It is an inner urge that leads him to drawing and painting in his studio in Tarn. He works on paper or old sheets glued on to the floor.Fortenye¬ars, the formats of his works have been 4×2 metres, sometimes even more. When looking at his production, it seems as if we were returning several dozens of thousands of years back; so remarkable is their similarity with the themes and techniques of prehistoric cave paintings (or stone painting in general). There are people, animals and various monkeys. He uses own technique: his paintings lack perspective or horizon, silhouet¬tes are depicted in profile,elementsarearrangednexttoeachother regardless of the scale, the colour scheme is limited (he uses yellow, black, and red). The prehistory of Philippe Azéma is, however, completely thought up. While our distant ancestors drew real animals, tho¬se of Azéma are completely black, fantastic, they come from our nightmares, from spooky fairy-tales or legends, such as the one about the Beast of Gévaudan. Abandoning the simplici¬ty of stone paintings, the space on the yellow background is filledwithsilhouettesofpeople,whicharealsoblack,placedin twisting rows, in layers bordered by lines, or arranged in a seemingly incidental way. The picture is decorated by nume¬rous signs, as if it was a kind of puzzle. Some details can be reminiscent of dreamy Africa. Philippe Azéma uses acrylic, felt-tip pen, ink, oil, modern ma¬terials and in his (false) archaic aesthetics he mainly works with very contemporary messages. They are blurred contours, like ink blots sprinkled on the canvas, or graffiti,whichshouldrepresent houses or figures,whichdonotlackaflashofhu¬mour. There is, for example, a silhouette of a woman holding the hand of a child, which holds a weird animal and a cartoon sticker. up | |
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