"HEAVEN" by Philippe Perrin

Good morning contemporary art lovers! Philippe Perrin is a fantastic French artist, most known for his sculptures of monumental scale weapons, handcuffs, knifes, razorblades, American punches... Expanding everyday objects gives them a new meaning, another interpretation and it's even stronger when it comes to weapons. His references are provided by the gangsta aesthetic but also by the classic literature and romantic poetry. He perfectly knows how to be provocative, cynical, and manipulative while remaining charming and seductive.

"When an object or its image is made considerably larger, the primary message disappears leaving space to another message of identifical form and different contents." Heaven is an enormous and impressive sculpture that actually represents barbed wire made out of aluminium. By expanding barbed wires, guns, knifes... he gives to those weapons another dimension. Oversized and immobile, they appear deprived of their murderous potentiality. One forget their violent killer function and one focus on the beauty of the objet itself. Here he puts the emphasis on the relationship between religion and weapons. Religion wouldn't it be a weapon? It might be if one thinks about all the wars that started from a religious quarrel. Heaven wouldn't it be the exact representation of the Jesus Christ's crown-of-thorns? If not why would a church takes the responsability of showing a huge weapon such as this one?

Exhibition on view at the church of St Eustache in Paris until November 20th...