Philippe Mayaux
Philippe Mayaux - color me, 2016
Série n°2
Semiose éditions
Philippe Mayaux is an artist who takes interest in literally anything, but above all in the strangest of subjects: mermaid's songs, formulas for jokes, tableware and poo! Philippe is convinced that we can think as much with the eyes as with the brain and he ensnares stories and spirits within his paintings to surprise the viewer even more.
In this coloring book, he was inspired by "grotesques" from the Middle Ages, creatures that are a mixture of animal, vegetable and mineral. In spite of his delicate strokes, the picture sometime goes off the rails and a crazy birdhouse might appear. Will you be able to find the farts and snails amongst the chaos of feathers and beaks?
Philippe Mayaux
Born in 1961 in Roubaix, Philippe Mayaux lives in Montreuil. He works principally in sculpture and painting (tempera). His oeuvre is in turn ambivalent, hallucinatory, libidinous and quarrelsome; monstrously pop, joyously cynical and vulgarly erudite. It is spread in thick layers or put together in voluntarily dripping, scabrous assemblies. After winning the Duchamps prize in 2006, he exhibited shocking pink vulvas and brains covered in Béarnaise sauce at the Pompidou Centre. His ?weapons? neutralised in modelling clay, resemble a dentist?s shop window; the cosmos (infinity) is revealed between two slices of bread. His chosen subjects and colours attract the eye, recycling the violence of his vision with morbidly obscene vitality. His work can be found in the collections of the FNAC and the Pompidou Centre in Paris as well as the MAMCO in Geneva.