With his new Insomniac Landscapes, Philippe Cognée once again demonstrates the power of his practice: a combination between his unconditional love of figurative painting, its rich history and unlimited formal potential, with the unwavering gaze of a contemporary man facing a world more disenchanted than ever.

For many years, Philippe Cognée has been tackling subjects often associated with the banality and ugliness of our civilization - supermarkets, highways, impersonal architecture - magnifying them through his technique of wax paint, which, once melted and crushed, creates a striking and unique effect of blur. In a nod to video, digital technology and the hypervigilance of Google Earth, his paintings offer a deconstruction of the contemporary gaze. They explore the notion of 'recognizable', of memory and oblivion, in an existential questioning on the “exhaustion of images”.

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