Emmanuel Flipo, born in Agen (France), lives and works in Montreuil (Sous Bois in Seine Saint-Denis) and Pézenas (France).
For many years Emmanuel Flipo has been the best known artist in Pezenas, notorious for his attention seeking events and parties featuring transvestites, scantily clad beauties and provocative statements and this year, with the opening of his new ‘Depot Flipo’ he has gone one step further by enlarging his corner of the pretty tourist town of Pezenas.
Actually, in private Flipo is a serious and hard working artist with a grounding in fine art; his etchings, drawings and watercolours made his reputation in the eighties and nineties of the last century in the area and he has a great facility with composition and technique together with a sympathetic understanding of the topography and tradition of the Languedoc.
Born in Agen he studied Beaux Arts at Toulouse and decorative arts at Nice before moving to Pezenas where he and his wife Corrine lived at the Hotel Alphonse, the renaissance maison de maitre which inspired many of his etchings and drawings. It was his numerous visits to New York and the US that caused a change in his art away from the more traditional disciplines and towards a more conceptual presence which included happenings and street theatre.
One such was the colouring of snow on the streets of New York with powder pigments projected from above to fall on the pristine snow. His preoccupation with decay and change in the material world can be seen increasingly in his large collages which are made using old wallpapers, decaying matter and paint and which latterly are increasingly based on pastiches of old master drawings made on a large scale.
He also has a penchant for earth pigments which ties in with his vision of the earth’s crust, used in granulations on watercolour paper and which have been seen in Parisian galleries. Although not as eye-catching as his large works, which of course are intended for public spaces where there is suffi cient wall surface to display them, his portraits and drawings of friends and models which can be seen in his Pezenas studio are sensitive and expressive of a gentler side to his character.
Essentially a traditionalist whose art is rooted in the French art of the 18th century his various different manifestations, as street artist, conceptualist, transvestite nevertheless reveal a restless and questing spirit behind his flamboyant exterior.
Emmanuel Flipo deals since 1996 with topics related to global warming and geo-politics. Through performances realized in the urban setting of big cities (New York, Copenhagen, San José, Toulouse) he creates monumental ephemeral art works where elements and natural energies become in turn the protagonists of the creation.
This art work with its urban proportions takes a geographical dimension where aerial and terrestrial photographs give the public an idea of the different scales used. As a sacrifice to heaven, this ephemeral art work will continue to exist thanks to these pictures taken from the sky.
From aleatoric to intuitive shapes
Using the perpetual variables of time and space, his compositions depend on their context of creation. In that dimension of instant, the shape materializes according to the laws of physics. A witness of his time, Emmanuel Flipo draws on the ground stylized cartographies of the world using pigments thrown into the wind. Through these aleatoric compositions, where expansions and concentrations follow each other, the artist lets himself be guided by the spontaneity of the creative gesture. Desired or accidental, these intuitive shapes remind us of his interpretation of the “geo-poetry” concept (initiated by Kenneth White); a kind of experimental and sensitive geography where territoriality and frontiers are out of date notions.
Instant as a context of creation
Far from any sophistication or aesthetisation, these creations emphasize the importance of simplicity, of pure gesture and give the predominant role to the Instant, where the creation and perception contexts mix together to reach direct experience. The performance cannot be without the public. Present during the creation process, the audience can experience the art work. Using easily recognizable universal graphic patterns helps plunging the spectator into a universe of familiar signs in order to touch even the less initiated persons.
Ephemeral compositions presented to the sky
Symbolic of transformations, of natural cycles of evolution, of the action of human factors and the way they interact, this set of shapes full of meaning and ritual gestures induces a spiritual preoccupation that refers to deep beliefs of the individual. Similar to mandalas developped in bouddhist and hindouist cultures, these ephemeral postcards post themselves as a sacrifice presented to the sky, they give back to nature what it gives us: sand, snow, natural pigments.
Seen from the sky in their entirety, these creations make sense by replacing man at the center of this macrocosm, and reaffirming the fragility and the limits of his existence.
BIOGRAPHY
2014 Opening of the gallery “Dépot Flipo” in Pézenas, France
2002 Opening of the Studio “L’Usine 64“ in Montreuil / France
2001 Foundation - together with collector Steve Guttman - of the Center of
Contemporary Art “Stop Art” in San Jose / California
1994 Foundation of the movement „La Collectiva“ for young artists in Pézenas
(with the support of the city of Pézenas)
1993 - 2001 Lives and works in New York / USA
1985 - 1993 Creation of his own Drawing School in his studio in Pézenas / France
1978 - 1983 École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts in the Villa Arson in Nice / France
1977 Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse / France
SOLO SHOWS (Selection)
2015 « Les damnés d’Eden » Usine Flipo, Montreuil / France
2014 « Carnets Indiens » Espace Lino Ventura, Garges-lès-Gonesse / France
2013 « Paréidolies » Galerie Couteron, Paris / France
2013 « Salon des Antiquités et de l’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux LAC » Galerie Humeurs, Bordeaux / France
2012 « Terres Brûlées » Galerie 1561, Paris / France
2010 « Précipitations exceptionnelles » (collages de papiers marouflés sur papiers) à la Galerie 59, Paris / France
2009 « Topographie 64 » (installation sable/pigments) à l’Usine 64, Montreuil/France
2007 L‘Usine 64, Montreuil / France
2002 “Stop Art”, San Jose / California
1999 Gallery Rodriguez Degranier, New York / USA
1996 IBM, Montpellier / France
1992 CRDC, Rosny-sur-Seine / France
1988 Gallery Hélène Trintignan, Montpellier / France
1986 Musée de Pézenas / France
GROUP EXHIBITIONS (Selection)
2016 “Social Food”, 116 Centre pour l’art Contemporain Montreuil
2009 “Le Carré dans l‘Art”, Galerie Blumann, Paris / France
2009 Studio Jonathan Abbou, Montreuil / France
2009 Gallery My Tailor is Rich, Arles / France
2008 “Un monde Toucouleur”, Espace Landowski, Boulogne Billancourt / France
2007 Domaine du Canalet, Hérault / France
2007 The Museum of Hyperreal Art, Californie / USA
2005 “Les rendez-vous de Cardet”, Cardet / France
1987 - 1990 Artist at the Gallery Blackman Havey, London / Great Britain
1988 Gallery Clavé, Guadalajara / Mexico Gallery
1986 Hélène Trintignan, Montpellier / France
PERFORMANCES (Selection)
2016/juillet « Sète en Méditerranée », for the celebration of the 350 years of the harbour of Sète in collaboration with the museum Paul Valéry, Sète, France
2016/juillet « Henry de Montmorency », Place du Capitole, Toulouse, France
2015/juin « L’ange des temps moderne » (mare de café) Montreuil /France
2014/oct. « Rima » (pigments sur bitume) Garges-lès-Gonesse / France
2012/août « Voyage entre deux mers » (pigments sur bitume) Capestang / France
2012/juin « Kill Monsanto » (pigments sur bitume) Montreuil / France
2011/juin « Kill Veolia » (pigments sur sel) inauguration de Dialogue en l’humanité, Lyon / France
2010/nov. « Line of Fire » (installation papiers en combustion) inauguration des locaux de CDC Climat, Paris /
France
2010/oct. « Hommage à Turner » (installation sable) Port de Calvi, Corse / France
2010/oct. « Calvi » (installation pigments sur 10 tonnes de sable) Festival du Vent, Corse / France
2010/oct. « Garonne » (installation pigments sur 20 tonnes de sable) inauguration de la Maison Éco-citoyenne, Bordeaux / France
2010/mars « Aftersquat » (pigments sur bitume) vernissage à la Galerie 59, Paris / France
2009/déc. « La Niña » (pigments sur la place enneigée de Hans Sank Torv) à l’occasion du COP 15, Copenhague/ Danemark
2008 “Temps mort”, Montreuil / France
2007 “Extra-térritorialité”, Montreuil / France
2005 “Le Semeur”, Lodève / France
2005 “Méditation Art Implosion”, Montreuil / France
2004 “PAO”, Enghein-les-Bains / France
2003 “No Blood For Oil”, San-Jose, California/ USA
1999 “Akdéniz”, Lodève / France
1996 “EL Niño”, New York / USA
PRIVATE COLLECTIONS (Selection)
France
Paris / Mr. and Mrs. Lovisi
St. Etienne / Mr. and Mrs. Chanteur
Germany
Düsseldorf / Mr. and Mrs. Harold Boettger
Röttingen / Mr. and Mrs. Reiff
Spain
Madrid / Jose Louis Ponz
Russia
Moscow / Eugène Morozov
USA
Washington / Steve Guttman
New York / Florian Hartmann
New York / Mrs. Kettle
DIVERS (Selection)
2009 Portes Ouvertes des Ateliers d’Artistes, organized by the Direction des Affaires Culturelles and the Mission des Arts Plastiques Montreuil / France
2007 “Histoire du look”, ARTE découverte
2006/2007 Interior Design of the Restaurant Les Palmiers, Pézenas / France
2003 “Shadows run”, Court-métrage, San Francisco / USA
1994 “Walking in a Cemetery”, Court-métrage, New-York / USA
PUBLICATIONS
-Les Gens du Picaro - Portrait d’Emmanuel Flipo, 2008, Catalogue
-Akdéniz (mer claire en turc, "Méditerranée", Pézenas, with texts by Loic Lantoine and
pictures by a.o. Igor Visnyakov
-Emmanuel Flipo - La Mémoire des Vivants et des Morts, with a text by André-Pierre Arnal
1992-1993
-érosions, Rodriguez Degranier Gallery, Catalogue
-Emmanuel Flipo, with a text by Dimitry Nesterov, Catalogue
Pézenas, 1992, ed. Domens
No Artworks for this Artist
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