Effets secondaires – Hypnotic Love (R2B1) Philippe Huart

Side Effects, the edition of 130 of Galerie LOFT, cooperating with Philippe Huart tens years after his first realization of porcelain capsule, assembles two templates, which is made of colorful polyresin and assemblies of trio.
The first template (R3) —  numbered from 1/130 to 65/130 — consists of three capsules in  red and white.
The second one (R2B1) — numbered from 66/130 to 130/130 — is composed of two capsules in red and white and one in blue and white.

Hypnotic Love (R2B1)

For this “Tricolore” version of Effets Secondaires, Philippe Huart plays with the degrees of multiple perception of his work. These three capsules assemble together or place on top of each other, giving collectors the possibility to participate in the work’s final blocking. We usually find that Philippe Huart’s capsules are in white and red. Here, the third colour : powerful and hypnotic blue, similar to Yves Klein’s blue, creates a new dimension connecting with the degree of human retina’s visual perception, hence renews the sculpture’s depth.

Side Effects, Transmuting Object

In front of us, three capsules meet and join each other in an astonishing ballet. The smooth silky skin, glowing colours, curved forms … Enlarged and then reconstructed, this everyday object is projected in a new reality. The capsule was aestheticized and transformed by itself before our eyes.
The path here, it is the path of Philippe Huart, an artist of perception and illusion. The recurring theme of his work and unique experience reflecting the volume at the same time, the capsules become medias and pretexts.
At first, the capsules represent the medicine or life-saving element, remedy treating diseases from the mildest to the most serious. This positive dimension is suggested by its half-white, a symbol of purity and cleanliness, which protects us as well as reassure us.
As Janus, the capsule is twofold, possessing the other extreme, the other side of which the vivid and bright colour offers a new perspective.
Red is a colour of love, however we can easily fall into the other red, violent and bloody. Blue of space represents in the first instance the sky, the sea as well as the serenity, which can be overturned to a hypnotic blue, graping and isolating us.
Fascinated by the colours, we are therefore prepared to dive into the drift and to sink into the addictions that the capsules symbolize.
Side effect … the miracle developpes into an obsession. We need more and always more pills, especially when we lost our footing and when the reality is distorted. The more beautiful an object is, the more attractive it is ; the bigger it becomes, the more eyes it absorbs.
Since Duchamp the transformation of object is not rare anymore in art. This change here is multiple. The loss of an object’s practical value gives it cultural sense from now on. The oversize of this work, which reminds us of the giant reproductions of everyday objects by Claes Oldenburg, overturns our conception of space. As for the colours and brightness of its texture, we obviously think of the pop artists and of the subjugation of object at a time of surconsumption.
Beauty becomes the land of dependence. Possess, improve, envy… the aestheticism brings an extraordinary range of emotion and sensation to us, from the most fabulous to the least honourable. Aestheticism is the medium of imagination without limits and the intermedia of “side effects” that it causes through the crystallisation of desires and hopes that it arouses.
Being decontextualized, the capsule is not antidote anymore, but an ultimate sublimation of our contemporary addictions.