Biography Essay on Philippe Parreno
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Parreno Philippe is an Algerian-born French avant-garde artist living and working in Paris. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux- Arts de Grenoble in the 80s. He attended school at Institut des Hautes Etudes en arts plastiques at Palais de Tokyo, in Paris as well where he graduated in 1989. It is at this Institute where he met the conceptual artist Daniel Buren who became an inspiration to him; inspiring the element of situ (being in a particular space and time). The French magazine Cahiers du cinema and writings of Serge Daney also went a long way in shaping Parrenos early conceptual development. Parreno rose to the contemporary art scene in the 1990s. His work straddles along the boundary between reality, and fiction was often blurring the lines of space and time. He employs a diverse range of media including sculpture, drawing, film, performance, sound and information technology. His style is unique and captivating and at the core of it is the vision of an ultimate form of communication with the ability to transcend our different languages. Parreno has collaborated with various artists in his works, artists such as Liam Gillick, Nicholas Becker a sound designer, Pierre Huyghe, Douglas Gordon, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Merce Cunningham (Lissoni).
Parreno was eager to showcase his talent and did so as soon as he completed his studies with one of his earliest works, Flowers (1987) that depicted a flower bouquet coming into and out of focus in a video file. Copies of the work circulated French TV channels with the most public appearing on Canal+ as the background of a weather report. No Ghost Just a Shell was a project in collaboration with Pierre Huyghe in 1999 where they copyrighted Annlee a Japanese figure of a girl and told her in a vivid picture. True to his nature, Parreno offered Annlee to a series of artists free of charge. Perhaps his most critically acclaimed work; Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait was a 2006 feature film on Zinedine Zidane, the famous French footballer that premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival (SCHIPPER). It was directed by both Parreno and artist-filmmaker Douglas Gordon. The film followed Zidanes every move during a football match at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid capturing the intense match with 80,000 fans on looking. His other acclaimed works include; The Invisible Boy (2010) depicting the life of an illegal Chinese immigrant when his anxiety and fears have created an imaginary monster that haunts him, Another Day with Another Sun (2014) and in 2015 he was part of the HYUNDAI commission to create art in Tate's Modern Turbine Hall, in which his Any when is included in the exhibition (SCHIPPER).
Parreno utilizes the visual concept of color, form, lighting and space to immerse his art viewers in a temporal delight of intricately designed concepts that fold upon each other. To Parreno, time manipulation in an exhibit is a tool he uses to free the minds of viewers, moving them through space in an experience of many different phantasms, suggestions, and rhythms thus establishing multiple and liberated narratives(Didier). Parrenos recognitions have arisen from his re-definition of contemporary art. His inclusion of information technology to traditional art design elements and being able to achieve a harmony among the different tools he employs is magnificent. More importantly to the world of art is his approach to the authorship of artwork which he usually expresses as "collective work" as he recognizes the role artists of both present and past play in his works. A most attractive trait of Parreno is his ability to transform traditional exhibition to a new experience through his combination of film, sculpture, lighting, spectral presence and sound. In an interview with The Guardian paper on 8th Dec 2016, Parreno shared his concerns about the rise of nationalistic sentiment in Europe, particularly in France with the rise of Marie Le Pen and Donald Trump in America (Lissoni).
Philippe Parreno mostly showcases his art in exhibitions. These are huge contemporary pieces that are not auctioned off but rather retained by the exposition organizers for their visitors. Though some of his pieces such as Fade to Black,' 2005 goes for 300 at Michele Didier gallery. Speaking to the Penguins, 2013 runs for 7500-10,000 at Cahiers dArt gallery. Federico,' 2008 goes for 600 at Serpentine Galleries (Artsy).
Works Cited
Artsy, "Philippe Parreno." 31Artworks, Bio&shows on Artsy (2017): n. pag. Web. 13 Apr. 2017.
Didier, mfc-michele. Philippe Parreno Fade To Black. 1st ed. mfc-michele Didier, 2005. Web. 13 Apr. 2017.
Lissoni, Andrea. Philippe Parreno Hypothesis. 1st ed. 2016. Web. 13 Apr. 2017.
Lissoni, Andrea. Phillipe Parreno: Hyundai Commission. 1st ed. Tate Publishing, 2016. Print.
SCHIPPER, ESTHER. PHILIPPE PARRENO INTRODUCTION. 1st ed. Berlin: N.p., 2014. Web. 13 Apr. 2017.
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