USIAREVIEW

Philippe Thuriet: Architect of the Subconscious

Philippe Thuriet is not merely an artist—he is a storyteller of the soul, a poet of line and pigment, a sculptor of silence and motion.

REVIEW BY FRANCISCO LACERDA. 8/8/2025

A master draftsman

Philippe Thuriet is not merely an artist—he is a storyteller of the soul, a poet of line and pigment, a sculptor of silence and motion. His work transcends the boundaries of medium, seamlessly interweaving drawing, painting, sculpture, and marquetry into a singular, evocative language of visual poetics. Born in 1969 in Dijon, France, Thuriet has, for over three decades, cultivated a deeply introspective oeuvre he calls “My surrealist soul”—an intimate cosmos shaped by rigor and reverie, structure and surrender.

A master draftsman, Philippe’s practice is rooted in the tactile immediacy of traditional media: pencil, sanguine chalk, and charcoal become his conduits into the subconscious. His compositions emerge not from the surface of the canvas, but from the liminal spaces between memory, emotion, and dream. The unconscious is not merely a theme in his work—it is the terrain he navigates with painterly precision and poetic sensitivity.

Thuriet draws on the visual languages of surrealism and abstraction to construct psychological landscapes—artworks that do not depict, but rather reveal. His figures, predominantly male, are less portraits than archetypes—vessels of vulnerability, strength, eroticism, and metamorphosis. In his hands, the male form becomes an expressive lexicon through which universal themes— transcendence, despair, desire, rebirth—are whispered and sometimes shouted. Color, particularly blue, occupies a sacred dimension in his visual vocabulary.

For Thuriet, blue is not merely a hue, but a metaphysical state—an invocation of the infinite, the unknown, the divine. In works like L'envol – The Flight (2005), this blue becomes a celestial skin, draped over musculature that dissolves into air and atmosphere. The solitary figure—part superhero, part myth —rises from an abyss of chaos, a symbol of escape, transformation, and the spiritual gravity of imagination. The composition echoes Yves Klein’s use of monochrome as an immersive threshold, while the body, like Klein’s “living brushes,” becomes an instrument of transcendental expression.

L’ENVOL / THE FLIGHT. Linen canvas on stretcher / Toile en lin sur ch ssis. Oil painting / Peinture   l’huile. 120 cm x 60 cm x 2.5 cm. 2005. Unframed / Sans cadre

Yet Thuriet’s vision is not purely ethereal. Like Francis Bacon, he peers into the darker folds of human experience. Where Klein invites us to ascend, Thuriet and Bacon descend—into psyche, into shadow. Their figures writhe and contort, caught in the eternal tension between form and disintegration. In Thuriet’s world, beauty is inseparable from anguish, and transcendence is often born through rupture.

Each of Thuriet’s works exists not in isolation, but as part of a grand, unfolding narrative. His art speaks in trilogies and cycles, echoing mythological arcs of birth, death, and rebirth. In the visceral red of Children’s Game (1997), we encounter the explosive chaos of primal energy—the innocence of life unfiltered. Genesis (2003) offers a contemplative counterpoint: muted, enigmatic, a meditation on becoming—on the inception of form, identity, and being. Finally, Rebirth (1999) suggests not resurrection in the religious sense, but metamorphosis—a shedding of skin, a renewal of essence.

These are not images to merely behold; they are portals to be entered, dialogues to be felt on a visceral and intellectual level. Thuriet invites us not only to look, but to pause, to descend inward, to reflect. His art demands presence. It evokes not passive admiration, but a form of lived introspection.

Ultimately, Philippe Thuriet is a cartographer of the inner world—a meticulous builder of emotional and symbolic topographies. His work is a meditation on the tension between control and chaos, geometry and gesture, flesh and spirit. Through his hands, the unconscious becomes visible, the abstract becomes personal, and art becomes, once again, a sacred space for meaning, transformation, and revelation.

Yet Thuriet’s vision is not purely ethereal. Like Francis Bacon, he peers into the darker folds of human experience. Where Klein invites us to ascend, Thuriet and Bacon descend—into psyche, into shadow. Their figures writhe and contort, caught in the eternal tension between form and disintegration. In Thuriet’s world, beauty is inseparable from anguish, and transcendence is often born through rupture.

Each of Thuriet’s works exists not in isolation, but as part of a grand, unfolding narrative. His art speaks in trilogies and cycles, echoing mythological arcs of birth, death, and rebirth. In the visceral red of Children’s Game (1997), we encounter the explosive chaos of primal energy—the innocence of life unfiltered. Genesis (2003) offers a contemplative counterpoint: muted, enigmatic, a meditation on becoming—on the inception of form, identity, and being. Finally, Rebirth (1999) suggests not resurrection in the religious sense, but metamorphosis—a shedding of skin, a renewal of essence.

These are not images to merely behold; they are portals to be entered, dialogues to be felt on a visceral and intellectual level. Thuriet invites us not only to look, but to pause, to descend inward, to reflect. His art demands presence. It evokes not passive admiration, but a form of lived introspection.

Ultimately, Philippe Thuriet is a cartographer of the inner world—a meticulous builder of emotional and symbolic topographies. His work is a meditation on the tension between control and chaos, geometry and gesture, flesh and spirit. Through his hands, the unconscious becomes visible, the abstract becomes personal, and art becomes, once again, a sacred space for meaning, transformation, and revelation.

@PhilippeThuriet #PhilippeThuriet 

Thanks to: PhilippeThuriet

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