Philippe Huart



Philippe Huart lives and works in Paris. Born in 1953 in Clamart, France, he started to work as an illustrator and graphic artist for magazines and record sleeves after several years of art and graphic studies. Parallel with this work he also painted, and since 1983 his paintings have been shown in a number of group exhibitions. In 1991 he decided to devote himself full-time to his artistic calling. Since then he has held many oneman shows and participated in group exhibitions, both in France and elsewhere.

Huart uses art to shed light on the effect that marketing and consumption have on our subconscious. His painting is based on objective reality, seeking to demonstrate that there is nothing more to things than what you see. To this end, he focuses on forms and rhythms, rather than establishing any primary relationship to the object at hand.

Philippe Huart’s painting is precise and explicit in a world where the image has become a fundamental means of communication. Indeed, icons and images provide the very inspiration for the process of expression that takes place in his mind.

His art does not deal with objects from our everyday lives per se, but with their characteristic marks. These marks have become omnipresent in the world around us, both at home and in public spaces – so much so that we now scarcely notice them within their context. However, while the accumulation and frequency with which they occur render these signs banal in their ordinariness, when enlarged fragments of them are placed side by side or superimposed one on top of the other, they are perceived as new – despite their commonplace familiarity.

Through his work and his choice of motif, Philippe Huart exposes our relationship to the objects with which we surround ourselves. Even so, his painting is far from neutral in its standpoint. It signals the artist’s reflections on our world and our culture – a testimony of our daily life.