philippe pasqua

with an unconventional career, philippe pasqua has imposed himself as one of the major artists of his generation.
his art impresses and shakes the certainties of those who are close to him, such as the great critic pierre restany.

in pasqua’s work, the taste for the monumental goes hand in hand with a fascination for the most vulnerable parts of the human being: the body and the face. the artist depicts these stigmatizing differences through his painting, magnifying them: he produces portraits of transsexuals, of children with down's syndrome or of blind people...
handicaps, differences, obscenity or the sacred: each canvas is the result of a struggle, a tension between what is acceptable to be portrayed and "tolerated" and what is socially discharged or concealed.

pasqua’s painting shocks us physically but it is also a vision, both explosive and incisive. the amplitude of the artistic gestures - a dance in which brutality and fragility, trance and lucidity alternate - requires the monumental format of his canvases.
he began by painting some kind of fetishes or enigmatic silhouettes reminding of voodoo practices. then, little by little, his gaze turned to those around him. he gets involved in the intimacy of the humans he portrays and reaches the depths of their beings.