Selected Works

Philippe Pasqua (Born in 1965, Grasse, France)
Lives and works in Paris
Through his extraordinary journey, Philippe Pasqua has emerged as one of the major artists of his generation. From the beginning, his art made a great impression and challenged the certainties of those who rubbed shoulders with him, like the great critic Pierre Restany.
With Pasqua, the taste for the monumental goes hand in hand with an attraction towards what is most vulnerable – bodies and faces, sometimes with stigmatising differences that the artist adopts and magnifies through his painting: for example, portraits of transsexuals, people with Downs syndrome, or people who are blind. Handicaps, differences, obscenity or the sacred: each canvas is the fruit of a struggle, a tension between what can be shown and “tolerated”, and what is socially repressed or concealed.
Pasqua’s painting strikes the visitor like an almost physical impact, but also like a vision that is at the same time explosive and incisive. The monumental format of the artist’s canvases is dictated by the breadth of his gestures – a dance where brutality and finesse, trance and lucidity alternate. He begins by painting the sort of fetishes or enigmatic silhouettes that evoke voodoo. Then, gradually, his gaze turns to those who are standing around him. He interferes with the twists and turns of people’s intimate depths, going right into the innermost areas of their being. As a counterpoint to this physical work, there are his grand drawings. The face or the body becomes a halo, mist, smoke, stroke, vibration. It is no longer so much a case of flesh as of sketched contours and delicate textures.
There are also the “palimpsests” – works on paper mixing silk-painting techniques, printing and painting, where the painter goes back over his own work and adds patches of colour to them or redesigns them.
Another major aspect of Pasqua’s work lies in his series of “vanities”. The technique employed evokes that of the silver- and goldsmiths of the Middle Ages working on a reliquary, and also some kind of shamanic ritual. He covers human skulls with gold or silver leaf. Sometimes, he covers them in skins and then tattoos them. Then there is the delicate stage where the skulls are decorated with preserved butterflies, with their outstretched wings and their iridescent colours: the light is refracted on their coloured, powdery surface, or falls into the deep shadows in the eye sockets. He also sometimes pours liquid paint in a thick stream that covers everything and submerges it.
For several years, the artist has also been going to Carrara frequently, where he sculpts skulls weighing several tons that are like massive stars radiating telluric energy. At the foundry, he produces large bronze casts that are then plunged into baths of chrome. The skulls that emerge — human or animal, like that of the hippopotamus — become like mirrors: sometimes you only see their blinding reflection, sometimes they disappear, so that what they are reflecting emerges. And on approaching them, inevitably it is our own image that we see.
His monumental sculptures permanently adorn the streets of Paris and were exhibited in the 53rd Venice Biennale.
Pasqua has exhibited in several museums to great acclaim, including his retrospective at Ahlers Foundation (Hanover, Germany, 2010), “Painting and Drawing” at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (June 2010) and the monumental show “Boarderline” at the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco (2017)
VIDEO
Philippe Pasqua’s solo show at Oceanographic Museum of Monaco
‘Work in Progress’ Trailer / a film about Philippe Pasqua (FatCat Films)
Interview with Philippe Pasqua for i24News
EXHIBITIONS

Group Show
Winter show 2024
Oct 31 - Dec 31, 2024

GROUP SHOW
AUTUMN 2024
Sep 5 - Oct 18, 2024

Group Show
Spring Show 2024
May 24 - Jun 30, 2024

Group Show
Election Day 2022
Nov 1 - Dec 9, 2022

Group Show
Winter 2022
Jan 1 - Feb 14, 2022

Group Show
Territory of Tenderness
Sep 10 - Nov 30, 2020

Group Show
91-DIVOC
Jun 1 - Aug 31, 2020

ShowRoom
March 2020
Mar 19 - Apr 24, 2020

Group Show
Summer Show 2019
Jul 1 - Aug 31, 2019

Group Show
N18
Nov 1 - Dec 14, 2018

Group Show
Summer Show 2018
Jun 28 - Aug 31, 2018

Group Show
French Salon
Mar 8 - Apr 27, 2018

Group Show
Summer Show 17
Aug 8 - Sep 17, 2017

Group Show
April 2017
Apr 21 - May 26, 2017

Group Show
Spring Break
Apr 20 - May 18, 2016

Group Show
40,30,20
Jan 8, 2015 - Feb 19, 2016

Group Show
Zemack’s 3rd Birthday
Jan 10 - Feb 15, 2014

Group Show
Summer Show 12
Jul 10 - Sep 1, 2012
ART FAIRS

Art Miami
Dec 5 - 10, 2023

Art Palm Beach
Mar 23 - 26, 2023

Art Miami
Nov 29 - Dec 4, 2022

Fresh Paint
May 30 - Jun 3, 2019

Art Miami
Dec 4 - 9, 2018

Art Toronto
Oct 26 - 29, 2018

Art Central Hong Kong
Mar 26 - Apr 1, 2018

Art Stage Singapore
Jan 26 - 28, 2018

Art Miami
Dec 5 - 10, 2017

Art Toronto
Oct 27 - 30, 2017

Fresh Paint 9
Mar 28 - Apr 1, 2017

Art Stage Singapore
Jan 12 - 14, 2017

Art Miami
Nov 29 - Dec 4, 2016

Art New York
May 3 - 8, 2016

Fresh Paint 8
Apr 5 - 9, 2016

Art Miami
Dec 1 - 6, 2015

Art Toronto
Oct 22 - 26, 2015

Art 15
May 21 - 23, 2015

Art Miami New York
May 14 - 17, 2015

Art Central Hong Kong
Mar 7 - 16, 2015

Art Stage Singapore
Jan 22 - 25, 2015

Art Market SF
May 15 - 18, 2014

Pulse New York
May 8 - 11, 2014

Pulse Miami
Dec 5 - 8, 2013

Art Toronto
Oct 25 - 28, 2013

Art Southampton
Jul 25 - 29, 2013

Art Market SF
May 11 - 15, 2013

Pulse New York
May 9 - 12, 2013

Context Art Miami
Dec 4 - 9, 2012

Art Toronto
Oct 26 - 29, 2012

SH Contemporary
Sep 7 - 9, 2012

Art Hamptons
Jul 12 - 15, 2012

Pulse New York
May 3 - 6, 2012

Pulse Miami
Dec 1 - 4, 2011
PUBLICATIONS
PRESS

The Times of Israel (Fr)
Jul 2017

“Shamenet” / Haaretz (Heb)
Jun 2017

The Jerusalem Post (Eng)
Jun 2017

i24News (Eng)
Jun 2017

Time Out Israel (Eng)
May 2017

Maariv (Heb)
Jun 2017

City Mouse (Heb)
Jun 2017

Efifo Magazine (Heb)
May 2017

Haaretz (Heb)
Jan 2017

The Window Blog (Heb)
Nov 2012

Calcalist (Heb)
Nov 2012

Art Croissance Magazine (Fr)
Mar 2013

Art Absolument (Fr)
Mar 2012

AZART Magazine (Fr)
Oct 2011

BALTHAZAR Magazine (Fr)
Mar 2011

The New York Times (Eng)
Jan 2013

Automobiles Classiques (Fr)
Apr 2011

La Monde Magazine (Fr)
Mar 2011

Art Actuel (Fr)
Mar 2011

Art Actuel (Fr)
Nov 2011

The New York Times (Eng)
Nov 2010









