PHILIPPE SOKAZO's photostream

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I am a Painter Designer living in Vancouver, British Columbia...
Reality and conformism are foreign notions to me, so I had to invent an alternative way of living, way of seeing, as a vital necessity.

I paint what we have forgotten to see, a world apart. A world that appeals to our memory and to the collective memory that existed before our individual awareness: proto-memory.

Each one of my paintings tells a wonderful story or describes a virtual or plasmatic landscape. The subjects are half-monsters half-cells, half fantastic half poetic. I like to call it iconic abstraction. When discovering my work the spectator becomes actor, free to interpret his visions joyfully.

I don’t try to portrait daily life on my canvas but instead enjoy reproducing my singular iconography on luxury objects (humidors, tufted rugs, smart cars, wine bottles, jewelry...) to create a storm in our every day environment, permanently altering our sensibility.

For rendering my colorist poetry, I found no better technique that ‘Hard Edge’ (notably used by Ellsworth Kelly) to accentuate contrasts and make colors vibrant with life.
After validating my style by travels in Europe, India, Canada and the United States –where was organized my first solo exhibition, and numerous encounters with prestigious and internationally renowned artists like Matsutani (Gutai Movement), Chillida, Riopelle or Alechinsky, I chose Vancouver to pursue my artistic career and show my art in a brand new dimension of inspiration, color and composition.