The Galerie Xippas is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent works by French artist Philippe Ramette. The artist creates objects in which to experience physically situations that are only suppose to be imagined. In parallel, the photographic work shows Ramette using his own body with the inventions.
For his second solo show at the gallery, Philippe Ramette will present a new series of prosthesis sculptures, hanging from the ceiling and walls, depicting the situations for which they were created for. These ergonomic objects were worn by the artist, hidden under his clothes, for the making of 12 photographs which will also be shown in the same space. The photos were inspired by an earlier series called Balconies (Balcony I, 1996 & Balcony II, 2001) where the artist reverses the image and at the same time, his own body in the image, to show a world « up-side down ».
Rational Climb (Ascension rationnelle) shows the artist dressed in his usual black suit, white shirt, and tie walking vertically on the side of a cliff and in Irrational walk (Promenade irrationnelle) he advances slowly along a tree trunk. Sitting on a wall, contemplating the view of a beautiful countryside and below him, a sweeping view of a zig-zagging road, Irrational contemplation (Promenade contemplation) illustrates Ramette’s bizarre and irrational universe.
« … Philippe Ramette has rather discreetly imposed himself on the French artistic scene as a wide-ranging creator endowed with a strange and poetic sensibility. Ramette offers up an array of objects, sometimes grim and caustic, sometimes ironic, ready for experimentation… »
Jean-Max Colard, Artforum, October 2001
A monography of Philippe Ramette will be published on the occasion of the exhibition and includes texts by Jean-Yves Jouannais, Paul-Hervé Parsy, and Christian Bernard.
For further information and/or visuals, please contact Ghislaine Pinassaud at the gallery at telephone + 33 1 40 27 05 55 or e-mail gpinassaud@localhost.
