The pink city by Philippe Katerine

There has always been something elusive about Philippe Katerine, singer of The banana And Luxor, I love it. Even his mother doesn’t know when he’s telling the truth or not, assures the artist, whose Mister pink have been deployed since Tuesday in Montreal. He says he likes to play. What if he was playing us a little?

With black felt-tip pen in hand, in the room of the Esplanade Tranquille called the “refectory”, Philippe Katerine draws a scar under the left breast of one of his Mister pink. “They were repainted,” he explains, after making this addition which appears on the fifteen resin characters with rounded buttocks that we can now come across in the city center, from Place Ville Marie to Place des Arts.

This barred line has a very personal resonance for the artist. “I had heart surgery when I was little, so I have a scar,” he said softly. On a more general level, I think everyone has a scar on their heart somewhere. »

The scar is the flaw, the touch of humanity perhaps, of this character of naive prettiness that he created by handling modeling clay during the first confinement, while playing with his children. A man that he has declined in several versions, positions and dimensions and which today embodies an artistic vision, “cuteism”.

Cute, in Philippe Katerine’s mind, is not a childish version of beautiful, like Japanese kawaii. Nor is it a kitten playing with a ball of wool. “I don’t necessarily find that cute,” he said. This kind word evokes wonder for him: a detail that makes someone “a little repulsive” “cute,” he explains, or even a bubble gum pink character who surprises in a gray environment.

“There is sunshine today, but Montreal is sometimes a little gray,” he slips, looking for the consent of his interlocutor. “So the idea of ​​this exhibition is to add a touch of color. And pink, it’s true, stands out very strongly in the urban environment. »

Enter fiction

His Mister pink, Katerine first exhibited them at Bon Marché, a department store in Paris. The most imposing of them (six meters high) was suspended above the perfumery shelves located on the ground floor. “As if he were going to crash into it,” explains the artist, without saying that it was a fantasized attack against consumer society.

They were also presented in an exhibition at the French embassy in Sweden, a “still tidy and fairly bourgeois environment”, describes Philippe Katerine. “Seeing them in there shakes up the order a little and that’s nice,” he says, smiling. It tells a story. It’s always interesting to see them move around. »

Katerine liked seeing one of her characters hanging from the Théâtre Maisonneuve building on Place des Arts (“We wonder why it is there, it’s like an entry into fiction,” he suggests) , but explains that he presents them according to the proposals. Without a plan, without deep intention. According to him, he creates without a long-term vision.

“I respond to personal needs, personal necessities. I need to do things,” he insists, specifying that people’s reactions are secondary to him. “It’s a purely selfish move to save my own skin. »

Not without malice

That Philippe Katerine says he works on instinct is hardly surprising. However, if we have followed him in song for more than 25 years, it is more difficult to believe him when he describes an almost naive approach, devoid of irony. We must admit that over time, we wondered more than once if he was fooling us…

We tell him, explaining the expression. No, he does not test our limits, he assures us, does not try to know how far we will follow him in his follies. “There is a taste for play,” however, agrees the artist, wearing a t-shirt bearing the image of the children’s show that morning. Sesame Street. “That’s how I am in life. I like to play. So there is malice, that’s for sure…”

Philippe Katerine says she really likes Jeff Koons, the American artist who creates giant animals that look like inflatable balloons. An art which, in the eyes of some, passes for a hoax. Not for him. “I saw his exhibition at Versailles which caused an incomprehensible shock, in fact,” he recalls. Well, it was part of the furniture of the time, it’s true. I imagine it shocked people…”

He swears that he is not trying to cause such shocks. That he is not a provocateur. “My mother always told me: it’s not your style to provoke. She must have understood that sometimes I wanted to provoke, which is not necessarily true. A mother is always right about her child,” he nevertheless concludes, displaying an enigmatic smile, as if to cover his tracks.

Philippe Katerine says everything and its opposite, in a tone of the obvious and sometimes even of embarrassed confidence. Often with a smile that defuses or disavows what he has just said. He defends himself weakly when it is pointed out to him, then adds: “My mother always told me: you never know if you are telling the truth or not. » He takes a break. “And me, do I know that? No, he concluded in a sweet tone. I don’t know at all. »

Philippe Katerine’s Le Mignonisme trail is presented until September 29 at the Quartier des spectacles and downtown. The singer is also in a concert-conference at the Cinquième Salle at Place des Arts this Tuesday, 8 p.m. (free), then at La Nef, in Quebec, Thursday, 8 p.m.

Philippe Katerine is also offering a meeting and a signing session this Wednesday, from 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., at the Urban Salon at Place des Arts.

Consult the course page

Consult the page of the concert-conference in Montreal

Consult the meeting and signing session page