With an introduction by Henry-Claude Cousseau (former Director of the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts) and a text by Christian Bernard (Director of Mamco, Geneva), this book contains over 200 works from the past twenty years.

The thematic organization of the works offer a panoramic view without imposing completeness. We perceive the profound reflection that unites them, the consistency of the artistic process of this major painter.

Aged 50, Philip Cognée figures well among the major painters of the French art scene. He explores the concepts of looking, image and memory.

He offers a reflection on the condition of modern man but also regarding the question of “subject” in painting, the relationship between abstraction and figuration, between a painted image and  a photographic image.

Philippe Cognée draws his inspiration from everyday life in its most familiar form. His cityscapes, towers, highways, supermarkets, abattoirs, containers… are transcended by a broad and powerful touch underlined by an original technique of painting with wax.

“With Philippe Cognée,” insists Henry-Claude Cousseau in the book’s introduction,“everything is, so to speak, framed. The mission of the framework, materialized or not, as later the photographic process, is to focus the attention, to produce, to constitute the image as a space that forces the attention of the eyes, to capture it. Similarly, the artist contrasts the smoothness and uniformity of a painting.”

Henry-Claude Cousseau thus evokes “a game between the epidermis of a painting, grainy, mottled, suggesting volume by a clever use of glaze, and that of the surfaces worked with streaks and unevenness.”

Distributed by the Comptoir des Independants to 600 general-interest bookstores, the book is also referenced in 40 databases and on websites selling online.

Visit the Philippe Cognée exhibition at the Daniel Templon gallery from October 31 to December 31, 2009. Also note that a book-signing is scheduled at the Flammarion bookshop in the Georges Pompidou Center, on November 14, 2009.