Two takes on human condition

Photographs by Philippe Ramette and paintings by Yves Belorgey invite visitors to consider different angles

By Alexandra Koroxenidis - Kathimerini English Edition

Surprise, ambiguity, paradox and transformation are some of the elements highlighted in an exhibition on the work of French artists Yves Belorgey and Philippe Ramette. The exhibition, at the Xippas Gallery, presents Belorgey’s large paintings of suburban housing complexes found around the world, as well as Ramette’s photographs showing the artist in unlikely, surreal circumstances.

With a sense of humor and self-mockery, Ramette constructs images that touch on human vanity. Ramette photographs himself in seemingly impossible yet real situations. Man’s struggle against the law of gravity is a recurring theme. Dressed in a conventional black suit and with utter composure, the artist is the protagonist of a different paradox each time. In one image, for example, he is seen suspended in mid-air with a rope connecting his waist to a box laid on the ground. Another image shows him standing on a pedestal, which is placed horizontally to the surface of the sea and against Hong Kong’s skyline. Interestingly, none of the photos is manipulated. They are the outcome of a process that begins with the construction of apparatuses drawn up by the artist himself, which he then uses to achieve the desired, surreal effect. In most cases, the gadgets are attached to the artist’s body but made invisible, which further enhances the image’s unreal quality.

Ramette’s images defy the rules of logic and point to the human condition in all its vanity and frailty. The artist also blends different media: he uses sculpture, performance and photography as the different stages of an extended artistic process that ends up in images of “the moment.”

Like Ramette, Yves Belorgey seems concerned with the human condition, but from an entirely different perspective. His paintings of actual large apartment houses of the ’60s and ’70s hark back to functionalism in architecture and consider the success and failure of the utopian quests of the Bauhaus.

At first glance Belorgey’s paintings seem realistic — to the point of approximating photorealism — as well as objective and standardized; but on closer look, one finds that the artist suggests human life between the buildings, and endows each building with a distinctive character. The paintings link the objective and the personal and sensitize the viewer to consider his life in relation to the structures he inhabits.