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Philippe Fretz was born in Geneva in 1969. He graduated from ESAV (current University of Art and Design) in 1992 and received the Stravinksy Prize the same year. He earned three Kiefer-Hablitzel Scholarships between 1996 and 1999 and worked in Marseille during this period. He was awarded
the Bailly grant in 2002 and was awarded by the city of Geneva a Grütli
workshop for two years. He received a Werkbeitrag from the Aargau Kuratorium in 2014 and 2017.
He has been collaborating with Art&Fiction editions since 2000 and was president of the Kugler Federation of Artists between 2009 and 2012. Since 2009, he has been teaching «Narrative Painting» at Gordon College in Orvieto, Italy. He also produces and publishes a bi-annual artist’s magazine titled «In medias res» which confronts his paintings with a personal iconography.
Philippe Fretz is quoted saying in the ‘Good News From Elementary Particle’:
Young’s slits refer to an experiment in physics, first carried out by Thomas Young in 1801, in which photons pass through two small holes drilled into an opaque plane. On a screen opposite, we observe
a pattern of interference fringes specific to the wave overlay. The experiment highlights the dual nature – particle/wave – of light. It was later refined by quantum physics. Indeed, we observe the same patterns of interference when we experiment by passing electrons of any matter through a similar device, even
if we project them one by one. Matter, in its fundamental structure, therefore resists the fragmentation and representation of a modelable world specific to scientific concepts and tools.
In other words, reality is made up of a fabric of relationships that surpasses in beauty and complexity
our effort to measure it. The repercussions of such a conclusion are so beautiful that I welcome this
experiment as the good news of elementary particles,» Philippe Fretz said.
