Philippe Soussan

by Emiliano D’Angelo

A conceptual art with intensely tactile and sensible implications: this is the constitutive oxymoron of P. Soussan’s poetics.
In his work the photographic media aspires to go beyond its intrinsic limit, that flatness of the image which no laboratory alchemy, no device or special emulsion may aspire to conquer; the only way to do so is by staging the scene carefully in advance, to realize images to superimpose on other images, suggesting the idea of an incomplete anamorphosis, transitions from one state to another that remain fixed in an intermediate moment of their enigmatic evolution (in what direction? From where? And with what coefficient of reversibility?).
There are three motifs which the Belgian artist continues to explore, and all three could be said to be chosen by virtue of a clear symbolic and communicative strategy.
The “Chèmises”, soft shells with mysterious and allusive draperies, comply with a reactive impulse aimed at the contemporary ideology of nudity and transparency (social forums, realities, the fetishisms of capillary and frenetic information “regardless of cost”).
The “Pommes” on the contrary re-establish the connection to an archetypal symbology, that of the imperium mundi: an original state of grace preceding the fall into the phenomenal, sensible world, characterized by instability and inconsistency.
The same may be said for the “Chaise mentales”, paper thrones which seem quite difficult to use as foundation for a stable dominion on the world (in the dual physical and metaphorical meaning, with particular reference to the discourse on the fleeting nature of optical perception and the process of mental elaboration of the image).
It is impossible not to perceive, in these last images, the homage to J. Kosuth’s “Three chairs”, to which all contemporary conceptual research, photographic and otherwise, is indebted to an extent that is hard to exaggerate.
The fragile and crumpled consistence with which these objects appear to our eyes creates a calculated effect of tension, of epistemological unbalance which implies an underlying and profound sense of intrigue and adventure. The more our explorative pathos gains the upper hand on our fear of getting lost, the more compelling the effect; and the deeper the furrow cut by the gnoseological doubt into the surface of our contemporary conscience, the profounder.
It is impossible to redefine the cartographic connotations of our I, to go back to the moment when we sat on our throne in royal garb; we were clutching the succulent sphere of Knowledge in our fist, so fast and pitilessly that it seemed that nothing (not even the chimeras brought into being by theologians) would yet escape.