French artist Philippe Cognée paints seemingly banal subjects, such as libraries, supermarkets, cityscapes and anonymous crowds. However, with the use of encaustic painting techniques, he accentuates his themes of anonymity, intimacy, and ambiguity, while also achieving a tactile quality.
Cognée draws from images in the press, television or his own photography to select compositions for his paintings. The photographic images are merely the beginning point as he then uses thick applications of paint and wax to recreate the forms and contours within each scene to cause the already anonymous people and locations to meld together further and become even more blurred and muddled.
He lives and works in Nantes, France and exhibits widely throughout Europe. His work is held in several private and public collections including Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes and FNAC, Musée de Grenoble.
