House of Images

Phil van Duynen

〉

In 2002, the Maison de l'image invited Phil for a major exhibition that he had staged to perfection. More than two decades have passed, the time has come for an essential retrospective that the Maison de l'image could allow since it claims to show all the facets of the artist including advertising.

In an already immense and yet homogeneous work, my favorite is a recent gallery of mutants. Through the magic of digital technology, which is second nature to Phil, he reinvents human typology, he creates a strange humanity in large format, whimsical and disturbing but ineffable. It jumps out at us through the impact of the purity and the surgical precision of the implementation. A work that is at the same time formidable and funny. Images that are always intense, surprising and disturbing and yet never excessive. We can only be hypnotized by these sublimated humanoids, of a confusing topicality so far from us without being really unreasonable. Technically, Phil assembles fragmented characters whose composite elements come, through the filter of digital, from various sources recreating a silent mutant. Our slight unease in front of these unusual portraits is tempered by the compassion we feel in their creator. And ultimately isn't that what he's looking for? More recently Phil returned to painting out of a taste for the unique work and the speed of acrylic.

Read more

But Phil is also an immense creative director. Initially destined for a career as a pianist and composer - gifted - Phil satisfies his obsession with the image by becoming the "creative" that we know. At the end of the 20th century, a category of creative directors like Peter Knapp, Art Spiegelman or Jean-Paul Goude have shaken up our visual landscape. Phil is of this ilk. He shakes up the codes of the image and leaves his mark on the agencies that want him to sell his talent. At a time when advertising was an honourable activity, he made these agencies happy, but he also thought about making his own by occasionally creating his own structures such as Prophil, X Generation or Ad-opt, where he could raise creativity to the base of the model (Ad-opt was elected Design Agency of the Year in 2013). It was the time of great creators who took the lead in the world of agencies, all losing their bearings. Among the brands that he would be responsible for sublimating there were Perrier, Swatch, Pias, Tom&Co, Fnac, Boghossian, Exit, Martin’s, Veuve Clicquot LVMH, NRJ radio...