Philippe Cohen is what we can call an enlightened amateur of contemporary art. The collection, founded in the early 90's, has become much more refined in the 2000s, becoming in recent years one of the most coherent and exemplary ensembles, which is in line with the passion of the contemporary who is the most know is international.

To discover these works to a wide audience means above all to find an intimacy, to take an intrusive look at the life and love of the art of a personality who has been working for years to build a set intended at first sight to remain a confidential act, a story and a private passion. But there comes a day when the desire to share defuses the strictly confidential framework to let the public benefit from the aura of such a subjective enterprise. To collect is first of all to take your personal choice on works, to select them, to keep them and to keep them preciously and above all to know more or more than anyone else.

The history of art in the last 20 years finds in the works of the collection landmarks and emblematic references. Throughout the various works, there appear constants revealing philosophical biases as well as more or less implicit temptations which thus draw chapters and modules with well-defined outlines.

By its cultural and conceptual affinities, it comes out, in contact with the different works, a propensity of the collector towards the typologies of the language, towards the treatment of the idea of time and duration and towards the intelligence and the artistic humor, without forget a deep questioning on the status and multiplication of images.

With regard to the various works of the collection, the video in particular, but also all that concerns the image and its production, one discovers there an exceptional interest for this space-time which allows a game of appropriations to the only spectator.

* Title of Allen Ruppersberg's work, Honey, I rearranged the collection

Organized in 5 chapters, the exhibition will try to highlight the richness of the collection of Philippe Cohen but also its specificities and through them, the personality of this French collector. The titles used for the exhibition and its chapters are directly inspired by certain works in the collection.

• Why Pictures Now?
• Color and Form
• I Am Making Art Too
• Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted
• No More Reality

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