Socles et Simaises
What is Abstract Art
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Socles & Cimaises. Les critiques des expositions signées par Anita Nardon en alternance mensuelle avec "Socles-Cimaises-2"

Philippe Benichou est né en Algérie (française) en 1957 mais très vite ce fut le retour en France pour cause de guerre (1954-1962.) Ses premières études artistiques sont guidées par sa mère, Arlette Oger, elle-même artiste. De la Sorbonne à San Francisco, il a poursuivi sa route en diversifiant ses possibilités. Elève de Francis Coelho à San Francisco, il devint acteur en même temps que peintre et on l’a vu sur maintes scènes et dans des séries TV. Il est le fondateur de l’Actor’s Studio de Hollywood mais entretemps, il se lance dans l’enseignement, dans des conférences et séminaires. Mais la peinture est une maîtresse exigeante et on le retrouve en solo ou en groupe dans des galeries réputées à travers le monde. En 2003, il fut un des artistes invités du MOCA (musée de l’art digital.) Bruxelles a connu en 1972 un timide projet pour ce genre de musée mas c’était trop tôt… Mais Benichou n’a jamais oublié l’Europe et on la revu au Luxembourg, en Allemagne, en France, en Suisse et il vient de franchir la frontière pour nous offrir ses délires en couleur où la profondeur des matières détermine la force des tableaux. A ne rater sous aucun prétexte. Anita NARDON Arthus Gallery, rue Simonis 33, 1050 Bruxelles


Here's Looking at You
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He takes us on an artistic odyssey making the unknown known and the invisible visible.

Philippe Benichou was born in French occupied Algeria and currently lives in Topanga, CA. He is an internationally known actor, director and acting coach of film, stage and television and an illustrious honorary graduate of the Actors Studio, New York, HB Studio and New York University for Film and Television. He is the founder of the Hollywood Actors Studio in California and a highly respected figure within the performing arts field. Benichou is also an accomplished fine artist. He continues a distinguished family lineage since his mother, Arlette Oger, and his uncle, Jean Oger, were established artists in France, and influenced Philippe’s creativity at an early age. He further studied art in Paris. Exhibitions of his work have taken place worldwide including those at MOCA Museum of Computer Art in New York, NY and his work is shown at the Johnson Art Collection, Los Angeles, CA. His paintings are found in many public and private collections in the U.S. and Europe and he is the recipient of awards and prizes in United States for his artistic merit. Benichou’s work is best described as an exuberant combination of abstract expressionism (“You”) and the non-representational color field (“Truth Seeker”). His brush strokes are unencumbered and free reminiscent of the gestural paintings of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. Through the use of impasto and mixed media he adds a rich textural quality that matches that of Clyfford Still. But the overall emphasis is on color with its intellectual and emotional ramifications and bold sense of exploration and discovery in his enigmatic compositions. Line and shape contribute significantly to the overall harmonies and rhythms that pervade his canvases and give them a distinct lyrical, rhythmic quality. The themes and purposes of his art express the dual quality of the flamboyance of the theatrical with vivid color and curvilinear line and the mysteriousness of the metaphysical with rich texture and elaborate pattern. His canvases reflect his visual search for new, cosmic explorations into his inner visions and emotions rather than words. This metaphysical search philosophically is visually expressed through a variety of materials and mediums alternating from palette knife to brush, acrylic, oil, pastel, tempera, gouache and watercolor incorporating gold, silver and bronze powders to create a rich, textured impasto – a virtual fireworks display of creative and exuberant energy. Benichou leaves a lasting impression. He finds meaning in the risk and challenge of the unconventional always evolving and inviting us to share in his never-ending journey. He takes us on an artistic odyssey making the unknown known and the invisible visible. Nancy di Benedetto NY Critic, Juror, Historian and Lecturer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art © May 2003 Nancy di Benedetto


Patrick Bruel and Philippe Benichou
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The Art of Friendship

Patrick Bruel and Philippe Benichou. Paris.


Philippe Photo
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Abstract Art is my Awakening

I believe there is a world beyond interpretation. I aim for my work as an artist to illuminate the soul not just please the eye. It's a fundamental distinction for me. The development of ideas is first and foremost in my work. Art is composed of medium, technique and idea. We thrive, I feel, through learning and understanding. Awareness is the beginning of the journey.

I am a student of the phenomenon in life of appearance and disappearance as it relates to the content of our everyday lives. Movement, light, color, line, shape and form all seem to embody a specific meaning but only in relationship to my focus on them. When I focus on a blue line it appears and disappears as my gaze finds it and moves on. A cosmic joke the universe plays. I find it astonishing. Marcel Marceau was a master at showing what is at once before us and then, shifting focus, gone.


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The development of ideas is first and foremost in my work.

Art is composed of medium, technique and idea. We thrive through learning and understanding. Awareness is the beginning of the journey. The "other side" is the mystery of life: complete and intoxicating. Human existence is always struggling between being and becoming. The self preoccupation is strictly human. Life is only complicated when you think about it. I meditate freely on the subject of being and existence. I aim for my work as an artist to illuminate the soul not just please the eye. It's a fundamental distinction for me.


Black and White
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I was led to becoming an artist through a spiritual quest.

It began when I was a child and crystallized in the mid to late 1990’s. I never consciously intended to paint. I have always been intensely fascinated by the innermost workings of the universe, both physical and spiritual. I find keen similarities between the vastness of the expanding cosmos, freedom of mind and being. After all, we are travelers in space.

Strange as it seems, I feel like my spirit is in a constant state of creative meditation, free to roam through many other planes and dimensions. My paintings are proofs and accounts of my travels and spiritual reflections. I paint from inner visions and intense emotions, impossible to organize in words, which I let go of instead on canvas. I seem to follow an inner guide and a wisdom resembling an internal muse. It supplies me with tremendous joy and a wonderful feeling of long forgotten peace.


The Oracle
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I can see and feel a use of luminance beyond my current technical understanding.

Your paintings are positive cures for depression. What gorgeous art! The colors and composition of the abstract pieces give a bonafide warm uplift to my mood. I need it, I tell you, I really need a belief in something tangible and energetic in modern painting. The color is in harmony with nature and completely one world ahead of it. Swatches of angels, paedomorphisms of hope and snapshots of graffiti in conflict, all borderless and brotherly-close to us.

I can see feel a use of luminance beyond my current technical understanding. That is why I "trust" your works. Yes, that's the emotion. I feel what I feel. You make me poetic by proxy.

I am lost among the little stars here in Hollywood, and lonely, but something in your creative power assures me that I am never alone. Also, I know you can draw anything you see: a human figure, an animal, a vista. Yet you see a magnitude of life beyond the architecture within it. The modern mind compares to modern computers, and you give diligence to all that math can wrought in dichromatic fractals.

I sense your need to form a word on love, a spirit in the machine of the painting that lets it live like a cell under a microscope. Also, I see unconsciously primitive, iconic and endless Lascaux on painted animal skins, lines both punk and calligraphic like Chinese characters. Rich, but rich as life. Well done, Philippe.


Mon Chemin
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Exhibition Galerie Vivendi. PLace des Vosges. Paris

L'art abstrait, langage privilégié de l'âme.