Recapturing archive images from 60’s and 70’s photography, Philippe Brunet paintings are intended, not only as a space of reflection on appropriation by re-presentation, but also as an investigation of the limits of our response towards historic images: taken out of their original context, how are they seen at the present time? From the everyday or mundane scenes depicted in the photographs, the artist breaks up the image retaining only the anonymous and indistinctive figures, thus diverting and concealing the origins of the chosen images and the primary function of the individuals.

Moved from a photographic space to the uncertain and undefined pictorial space of the canvas, the ghostly silhouettes, fixed or frozen in plaster, become inscribed in the artist’s network of motifs-symbols. By the layering and accumulation of colours and coats of paint, Philippe Brunet hides and “cuts-out” parts of the canvas, leaving fragments and residues of the earlier coats. Between figuration and abstraction, movement and inertia, addition and subtraction, these ambiguous spaces evoke the constant return of history’s ghosts and remains. By blocking all references to the original event, the spectral figures are renewed as motifs and take part in a new pictorial outcome.

Biography
Philippe Brunet obtained a bachelor in fine arts from Concordia University in 2007. His work has been showed at the VAV Gallery (Montreal) in the Fifth Annual Graduating Students’ Exposition and at the Gallery Art Mûr (Montreal) in the festival Art Matters. He lives and works in Montreal.

Contact Philippe Brunet: mr.philippebrunet@gmail.com
Artist's page
Presse release [PDF]