« Philippe Pasqua, ou la rage de vivre et de créer. » Cyr Mald
Philippe Pasqua, born in Grasse in 1965, is an autodidact artist-painter and sculptor.
He gained an interest in photography from a very young age which allows him today to capture intense looks and powerful emotions. This passion for photography will eventually lead him to paintings. The voodoo and the fetish marked the beginning of his career. Leaving place to the portraits, nudes and vanity. Some interactions and connections with Lucien Freud as well as Francis Bacon can be felt in Philippe Pasqua’s paintings. All of them would paint the most vulnerable things: living nude bodies and portraits. Being inspired is far from copying, but a way to nourish what has already been done.
Philippe Pasqua is a painter that is shaken by the will to paint subjects that are often forgotten, overshadowed, as they are considered different and disturbing. By putting forward these themes (trisomy, blindness, transsexuality…), Philippe wants to demonstrate the strength and the fascinating sensitivity that emerges from these subjects.
One of the main characteristics of the artist is the thickness of his paintings, an organic material created by the layers of paint. Philippe reworks his paintings and continuously adds traces of paint. Thus, the painting accumulates a certain complexity. Expressions arise and emotions break through the canvas.
When Philippe paints, he plunges himself in another world, away from the reality in the conscious and subconscious of his models.
Philippe has also developed a talent for drawings. To the complete opposite of layers and various range of colors seen on his canvases, a lot more delicacy is felt in the traits of his drawings, where we can voluntarily find foggy contours.
His first exhibition took place in 1990 in “l’Espace Confluence” located in Paris. He organizes numerous solo exhibitions, participates in various events around the world (Singapore, Hong Kong, Moscow, London, Taiwan…) and, since 2010, he permanently exposes his art works in “The Storage”. Located in the suburbs of Paris, it gathers both exhibition, storage as well as a garden of sculptures.
Throughout his career, Philippe Pasqua adventures himself in sculptures. We are in 1997 when Philippe decides to look into the reality of bones. “I wanted to see what lies beneath our skin, beneath our flesh”, that is Philippe’s relationship to his sculptures. Thus, he explores the theme of vanity adorned with butterflies. This sculpture enhances the contrast between harshness represented by the vanity skull and gentleness by the butterflies.
It further symbolizes the soul that escapes and rises, as well as the fragility of life. In 2012 he launched himself in the realization of the monumental, a chrome-aluminum 7-meter-long, 4-meter-tall Tyrannosaurus Rex comprised of 350 bones casted on a real prehistoric skeleton and assembled one after the other.
Thereby, Philippe Pasqua is an unquestionable, professional artist, continuously in movement, in constant reflection and in the quest of original ideas for the realization of new works of art. Always bigger, always stronger, always more beautiful. He surprises, intrigues and fascinates. These are what make up his strengths and talent.