Philippe calandre
INNER ROOM WITH A VIEW

group EXHIBITION

February.28 - JUNE.30.2021

Philippe Calandre is an artist whose works are influenced by his frequent travels and the industrial harbour cities he visited while sailing the seas. Like painters on their World Tour, he immerses himself into the landscapes he visits, gets inspired by vernacular tales, and admires the achievement of builders. It is through photography and montage that Philippe Calandre then composes new architectural landscapes, his vedute.

Calandre chooses his featured buildings as much for their plastic and architectural qualities as for their values or their symbolism. Effectively, they can appear in his re-imagined landscapes in their entirety, due to a certain detail or in fragments. The palette of colors that enhances these architectures is quite narrow; Calandre mainly uses blacks and whites. He locates his new constructions mostly in undetermined landscapes devoid of human life. All these elements contribute to a timeless and universal rendering of his creations.

“Architecture is the great book of humanity, the principal expression of man in his different stages of development, either as a force or as an intelligence.”

- Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris

To Calandre, it is no doubt that architectural productions, whether ancient or modern, intrinsically reveal the aspirations, beliefs and turpitudes of societies which are contemporary to them. From these works, symbolically charged, emanates a deep interiority.

In the Theopolis series, the City of Gods is combined with a mountain, representing the crossing point between the earth and the divine world. His ascension signifies the progressive renunciation of the goods in this world for a spiritual elevation. Likewise, the recurring pattern of the bridge is also the expression of a passage, a link between two states, two spaces, peoples or cultures. Throughout the Kepler 452B series, the square pattern, which symbolises knowledge and stability, is often represented as hollow, leaving, like a window, a view of a future yet to be determined. From this same series, the sculptural skyscrapers defy the laws of gravity. Are they technical feats or the expression of decadence? The photographer does not seem willing to recreate the Utopia theorised by Thomas Moore but rather a dystopia where the gable of La Cité Radieuse by Le Corbusier, once a symbol of modernity, of living together and of the perfection of volumes (Modulor) is erected here as a votive megalith. The artist who is, in essence, a creative is also an architect and a prophet.

The conscientisation of multiple aspects of the human mind and their expressions are always admirably formulated by Calandre. He meticulously performs the montage, the splices and the shadow issues. The grains in his photographs originate from the initial analogue process and his choice of satin tones, both elements that contribute to his artistic signature and express the softness and benevolence that the artist feels for his fellow beings.

Philippe Calandre Studio Visit