Philippe Lamesch;
Credit: Martine Pinnel
Valerius Gallery in Luxembourg City has announced a solo exhibition of mixed-media collages by Luxembourgish artist Philippe Lamesch.
Born in Esch-sur-Alzette in 1977, Philippe Lamesch is a Luxembourgish printmaker and collage artist. He trained as a traditional printmaker at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the KALA Art Institute in Berkeley and has reinvented the use of classical printmaking techniques to create "printed collages". In addition to his hand-printed pieces, he also uses "found paper objects" in his compositions.
In 2019, at the end of a successful exhibition in New York, the artist decided to make 2020 a year of travelling, to visit a multitude of cities and collect torn posters from all over the world. Whilst the pandemic put a stop to these original plans, he opted to use these new circumstances to create something even more exciting. Philippe Lamesch explained: “I decided that, if I couldn’t travel to all these cities, why not ask for help from my artist friends all over the world?”. The project "Torn Up World" was born, originally inspired by the 1961 exhibition in Paris "La France déchirée" by the renowned poster artist Raymond Hains.
An important concern for Philippe was to support artists in the difficult times of the pandemic. As such, he paid the artists for their efforts of sending him torn posters that they had collected from the walls of their city. In the end, packages from all over the world reached the artist in Luxembourg.
The result is the artist's first solo show in ten years, called "Torn Up World", at Valerius Gallery, which will be displaying over 20 colourful mixed-media collages that emerged from this international collaboration.
The exhibiton will open to the public on Saturday 16 January 2021, from 10:00 to 18:00 at Valerius Gallery (1 Place du Théâtre, L-2613 Luxembourg), in the presence of the Philippe Lamesch. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, efforts will be made to space people out. The exhibition will run until 13 February 2021.
The gallery will also publish a catalogue about this project, which will be available from this Saturday 9 January 2021.
