Philippe Perrin (artist)


Philippe Perrin is a French contemporary sculptor and photographer who lives and works in Paris. His works are in the collections of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris and the Musée d'art contemporain de Lyon.

Biography

Philippe Perrin was born in 1964 in La Tronche. Graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Grenoble, his work has been the subject of many gallery and museum shows, including his retrospective at the Maison Européene de la Photographie, at the Fondation Maeght, as well being sold in public auction, including the work 'Couteau' sold by Sotheby's Paris in the sale 'The Secret Garden of Marianne and Pierre Nahon' in 2004.

Work

Since the 1980s, Philippe Perrin has been an unconventional figure on the international art scene, known for his short temper and bad-boy image, exploring the inter merging of reality and fiction, evoking in his work symbols of violence taken from a variety of genres, such as crime fiction, cinema, or popular culture, notably he pays with the question of scale of the object, such as the revolver or a razor blade.
His fascination with fictional characters or symbols of the underworld : the gram of coke becomes a kilogram, or a razor blade, a revolver and other symbols of violence are presented on a large scale. For the French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud, "Perrin is a manipulator of signs, interpreting the relationship between reality and fiction through a question of scale, treating in the same manner the relation between a true biography and that of the figure of a celebrity."
A work representative of Perrin's language of allegory-visual suggestion his "Skyline": seven ball cartridges of variable sizes respect the measures of the space where they are inserted, forming a front: first line of a fighting army or a skyscrapers seafront.
"All art is political. Then we must not confuse political artists whose only goal is to seize power at any price, including mediocrity, with political artists who are supposed to "say" things…" Philippe Perrin

Exhibitions

Main solo shows