The Center des monuments nationaux is presenting the “Ready-Melts” exhibition at the Villa Savoye, by Philippe Biancotto, photographer and visual artist. His work could be inspired by surrealism by the place given to dreams and the unconscious, but he deconstructs genres as quickly as he melts his models.

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He chooses to endanger the perennial and to divert objects loaded with memory and affects that have reached the status of icon-objects. By working with ice, he transforms fashion accessories, furniture and rooms from the Villa Savoye into perishable sculptures that explain insecurity, the disorganized flight of time. Atoms and paradigms are reversed, perfection is broken: the liquid becomes solid, water becomes a supporting structure. Melting ice is both indolent and violent

Philippe walks his long silhouette of a dancer in this iconic place that he appropriates and transposes it into  thirteen photographs presented in the visit trail on the 1st floor of the villa. Little by little in each room they discover themselves and  resonate. With humor Dream Cream appears in the kitchen, the variations on the LC2 armchair in the living room, while Talons or Revolver inhabit the master bedroom, exuding a presence in a home that comes alive, in the bathroom, the The ice revolver gives way to a wet trace and the hand becomes a revolver ...

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“This exhibition is the materialization of an idea: balance and duration. The ice has imposed itself on me as the obvious support, it keeps an object assembled, replaces a truncated part and ensures its stability for a short time; then cast iron and gravity do their work, the photograph freezes this moment of grace.

Passionate about architecture, I could not help but be inspired by Le Corbusier, and the Villa Savoye, a major building of 20th century architecture, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has become a magnificent setting for Ready-Melts. ” PB