Opening on Friday November 15, from 6 to 9pm
On the occasion of La Nuit des Bains
Xippas gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Philippe Ramette in Geneva.
Continuing his explorations in public spaces, Philippe Ramette once again introduces his now iconic silhouette through a series of sculptures, drawings and a photograph. A bronze figure, a faithful small-scale replica of the artist, embodies the stages of introspection and doubt, essential to the creative process: a journey marked by questioning, relinquishment, and determination. Rather than fixed objects, it expresses mental images, creating a scenario where the viewer is invited to project themselves, drawn in by the formal representation of the artist’s inner states. At the same time, the works evoke the shared limitations of our human experience. The formalization of mental processes suggested by the titles gives rise to improbable postures, leading to irony, and at times, even absurdity. In In Praise of imbalance and In Praise of Wandering, the artist leans on emptiness with all the nonchalance that their titles imply.
Each sculpture is characterized by the artist’s choice of stone and the variously coloured patinas, ranging from black to gold and green. They remind us of the sculptures from the 19th and 20th centuries that populate the public domain, but above all they evoke a timeless creative space that lends itself to all possible forms of reactivation.
The exhibition also features a series of drawings. After completely abandoning paintings, this medium often serves as the starting point for a photographic or sculptural project, continuing the artist’s exploration of the world around us. In Philippe Ramette’s work, drawings play the role of schematic drafts for fleeting conceptual whims. They often represent a sort of crystallization of absurdist propositions, dreamlike notions where the laws of physics and logic no longer hold sway. By adopting a lighter approach while remaining guided by his same obsessions, he often combines his drawings with texts and takes constant pleasure in revealing the absurd with both humor and elegance. As in his work La perte du sens (in French “sens” means Meaning as well as Direction), the artist delights when, behind an apparently literal title, a second, more subtle interpretation quietly emerges.
The artist therefore feeds off of banal experience to expose its potentially uncanny cracks, or to propose extraordinary associations that serve to show the precariousness nature of the codes that govern our daily lives.
