Philippe Durand — Sioule et cætera — Laurent Godin Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: February 7 → March 23, 2013

“Particularly well known for his city portraits (Brussels, Paris, Los Angeles, and more recently La Havana, Bamako, Belgrade) Philippe Durand yet never moved away from rural and periurban areas. There, the “regional planning” which creates “zones” that are geographically sequencing and segmenting human activities like work and leisure, production and consumption, is often more tangible than within cities where the heteroclite signs of modern life are consolidated in a more dense manner. The exhibition Sioule et cætera, in contrast to several of his previous exhibitions focusing only on one spot, articulates around different sites, from the Auvergne to Dubai.

Ironic and contemplative land surveyor, Philippe Durand keeps a childlike ability to seize the environment as a play space, and a sarcastic enthusiasm as to the disproportion and grotesque of whatever sets itself up as important, which he will inevitably dismantle by capturing what lies behind the scenes." 

— François Piron

Born in 1963, Philippe Durand mainly works with photography and video. He examines our contemporary socio-economic realities by articulating image and object. He practices a floating vision system, always looking for tiny clues, fragile signs and anonymous writings that however point out the effects that life conditions imposed by hypermodernity can have on the individual and the environment. He has recently exhibited at the MAC Grand Hornu, at La Virreina in Barcelona (2012), at CRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, Sète, at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, at the CA’ASI in Venice (2011). His works are currently presented in the photographic collections of the Centre Pompidou — MNAM.