Collaboration Peter Hill and J.J. Voss (Photographer)
S U P E R F I C T I O N S
Patrick Corillion
A French artist who has created the lives of more than
ten individuals. He and his project were recently described by the French critic and
curator Jerome Sans in Galeries Magazine (Feb/March 93):
Tale-teller and troubadour of modern times, the young Belgian artist Patrick Corillon,
one of the higher profiles in the new European scene, has affinities with Borges and
Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese poet of heteronymy...
"Patrick Corillon has created about ten different characters which he develops from
exhibition to exhibition, by dropping tiny hints of their biographies. At first he
did not reveal their identities, leaving it to the viewer to complete their initials
by imagining a proper name.
"In 1988 the artist brusquely changed the rules of the game, lifting the veils of
anonymity from fictive characters of another age. All of them have a foreign sounding
ring: Oscar Serti, a Hungarian writer, born 1881, died 1959; Professor Wierzel,
a scientist; Marina Borovna, a poet... In the manner of a star reporter, Patrick C
orillon plays with the figure of an artist travelling from spot to spot in order to
realise exhibitions relating critical episodes and adventurous situations from the
lives of each of the invented characters. It's an image of art as adventure, as risk,
along with a reference to the imaginary worlds of childhood."
