Comme un ananas — Une carte blanche de Philippe Katerine — La Galerie des Galeries — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: April 4 → July 7, 2012

“Like a pineapple, I’ve spent my life, half sliced up, half whole.” ¹

Philippe Katerine is not yet done with being free. Invited by the Galerie des Galeries to put together one of their carte-blanche exhibitions at the Galeries venue, he has devised a show that comes in slices. Divided among several galleries, Comme un ananas (Like a Pineapple) gives visitors an excellent opportunity to discover new facets of an artist who remains unclassifiable.

While known especially as a singer in France, Katerine also works in other domains, notably film, dance and the visual arts. It is precisely for this aspect of his career, for the total artist that he is, that the Galerie des Galeries was so eager to invite Katerine to put together his first art show.

To disappear in order to better reappear. Katerine regularly does just that in his video clips and concerts, where he dresses as the Queen of England, a basketball player or the Pope in order to deliver words of wisdom or vice. In his personal Journal Cum Graphic novel, published by Denoël in 2007, the artist shares his memories in a mix of drawings, texts and collages. For his project at the Galerie, he has pushed his outrageous introspection further, though not only that. With his characteristic detachment and prescience, he also observes the world around us. Just as the show’s title does not suggest, Comme un ananas focuses especially on a subject that is dear to the artist, the actors in public life who pop in and out of our lives. The exhibition begins with a series of intriguing drawings displayed as diptychs. The first of the pair is the portrait of an important person in an unseemly situation, while in the second the subject vanishes. The show continues with appearances altogether worthy of the unpredictable Katerine.

In a kind of journey of initiation, the visitor passes through several galleries that amount to so many different mental, sensory and musical worlds. Through these plays on what is missing and what alluded to, Katerine engages in a surprising, in-depth reflection on appearances.

Behind it all, a latent portrait of the artist takes shape, a mirror of each one of us.

¹ Song from Julien Baer