Over the past months, while many were running in circles, Philipp brushed with triangles. Most of us see the inside of our abodes differently, after so much time spent inside. There are few round lines in our apartments, huts, and houses. We tend to prefer straight arrows, neat boxes. We rub and hit the people with whom we share our spaces. The straight walls close us in. The right angles leave no room for escape. Condominiums replace cubicles as locus of contemporary alienation.
Like half of humanity, The artist too sheltered at home. Between four, or rather, three walls. Indeed, as the weeks dragged on, springtime blossomed and the pandemic raged. For the first time in our lives, the wall with the door to the outside has disappeared. Like so many others given, the mythologies that represent our personal indoor spaces gradually eroded. How do he represents this change? How do Philippe captures the changing certitudes and new elements of a closed in world? All-important questions for a photographer.
The home can be a cavern blinding us from the realities of the world, a safe harbor to recuperate, a workshop to develop new ideas: the common denominator is the ability to leave (and return). One wall has a door- but that wall is now gone. From a stable four walls, only three remain. The inside of our heads and homes, formerly distinct spaces, have now synthesized into one. The square turns into a triangle.
As a collective, city, or commune, we remain confined between three thick walls with no ability to step out and peer into what is happening outside. However, there is light, and feelings of all shapes and kinds, next door. Perhaps this is what Philippe sought to reveal through his kaleidoscopic depictions. A reflection of the wide spectrum of emotions that our households have been through at the mercy of a mysterious virus.
The artist poses a question.
So he was at home, stuck between three walls. If he was unable to capture life through his camera, he had to recreate it. A photographer unable to see the world appear in front of my trained eyes then seeks to think it into being. And, in doing so, he created a new universe, based on the elementary symbol of his own personal zeitgeist: the triangle. The emergence of this shape as central tenet of a spatial imaginary is not unheard of. Philippe creates in contemplation of the works of pre-eminent French masters.
Andre Breton considered the Place Dauphine as Paris’ pubis. In the surrealist imaginary, the two meanders of the Seine around Ile de la Cite compose the “legs” of the French capital. Breton writes of the square’s “triangular configuration and the central slot bisecting the area in two wooden spaces”. There are no coincidences: Place Dauphine’s eminent feminine qualities haunted me in my childhood stomping grounds, just a few hundred meters away. These womanly threads are woven into my body of work.
How does a photographer become a painter? One might say he always have been. A photograph is a painting of light. Back in New York, Philippe’ve outfitted his Gowanus studio to capture the reflection of bodies and souls through the light exposed from the North. This is his trademark angle and one of the catalysts for the singular disclosure in his portraits. Now, the light remained, but the models were gone. Bubbling with creative energy, visited by my seminal passions, stuck between three walls, The artist got to work. As the light shines through the stained glass of cathedrals to illuminate revealed universes, the triangular medium illuminates our shared experience of life.
With this spatial project, He has become unstuck in time. This series of paintings reveal the surrealist inspirations, cubist aspirations, and existentialist ruminations that shaped my formative years as an artist, as well as in conversation with the Op Art contemporaries: Rely, Vasarely, or Richard Anuszkiewicz. A body of work emblematic of the trials of our time, and the promise of alternative creative genesis for a new epoch.
BIO
If one had to choose a foundational moment in the life of Philippe Regard, you would have to return to the summer of 1988. A twenty something freshly graduated from Paris University of Economics, he heads to St Tropez, allured by seasonal migration where the Parisian elite flocks to the mediterranean to see and be seen. There, he meets Roger Vadim, iconic film director of the French New Wave, now departed, remembered for his role in the cinematographic eclosion of many of the era's most striking women: Brigitte Bardot, Jane Fonda, Catherine Deneuve. Vadim is amused by the energy and audacity of the young man, and hires him as his personal assistant. The ensuing period is that of apprenticeship of the world of the image for Philippe: three plays, two TV series, and one audition tour of France looking for the next generations talent.
After a popular introduction to the art world, the young Philippe learns a foundational lesson: turbulent times either drive the creative impulse away or, on the contrary, strengthen an individual's resolve to express the inner flow of perceptions and emotions that is bubbling beneath the skin. Inspiration comes from hard moments.
After his apprenticeship with Vadim, Philippe moves to Miami and becomes director of photography on film sets. His dream is to write, direct, and produce his own long feature. However, despite saving for years with the hope of directing his own film, he does not manage to see it post production. Still, he is fascinated with the image, the manners in which one may capture the ephemeral moment and extract from a passing impression a universal dimension.
He heads north to New York City, at first as a simple photographer's assistant. The memories of his failed film fade away. He is able to make a living off his art, after finding his own style which irrigates his work until today. Philippe captures his subjects in an intriguing mix of vulnerability and power. Such an approach was popular in the fashion world, where models are too often represented as expressionless pieces of wood.
In 2008, style photography work becomes hard to find. The implosion of the industry leaves Philippe with empty pockets but a head full of ideas. During that year, he moves into an abandoned industrial space in the Gowanus, and re-models it to create his ideal studio. In the lineage of Peter Lindbergh, the natural light of the studio wraps around his models to reveal spontaneous, blinking emotion. These signs tell a story. This story moves the viewer beyond aesthetic considerations.
Today, after years of capturing human subjects with his camera, Philippe explores a new medium: collage on canvas. He builds on previous work, using previous portraits that he cuts, deconstructs, and reassembles to create distinctive paintings. Whereas a younger Philippe may have been focused on painting an individual subject, a new layer is added: the artist interrogates his own process of representation.
A worldwide shakedown, like in 2008, was needed to push the artists' creative inspiration beyond the frontier of previous exploration. During months of lock down, Philippe Regard is locked down in his studio. He turns around in circles, or rather, in triangles.
His recent solo exhibition “Lost in Triangulation” opened at 562 Studio in Brooklyn from May - June 2021. In October, Philippe’s series was part of the Gowanus’ annual art fair. From April - June 2022, it was also featured in Brooklyn Utopias: Along the Canal.