Cece Philips (b. 1996 in London, UK) is a London-based painter, completing her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in London (2023). Philips’ luminous compositions explore ideas of spectatorship and voyeurism. Embodying the role and spirit of the flaneur, or flâneuse, her works draw on a multitude of sources, from the archive, film stills, found imagery, and memory she weaves together historical and contemporary influences to interrogate ideas of interiority, desire and loneliness. Framing is a recurring device in Philips’ paintings, though windows and doorways, barriers and veils are constructed to challenge an easy reading of her female protagonists. Palette, attention to light and space all lend psychological and narrative depth—details that lead us through and beyond the work, and activate the viewer’s own imagination.
Solo exhibitions include; ‘Conversations Between Two’, Peres Projects, Milan (2024); ‘Fishing for Intimacies’, Post Gallery Zurich, Zurich (2024); ‘Walking the In-Between’, Peres Projects, Seoul (2023); ‘The Night Has a Thousand Eyes’, Peres Projects, Berlin (2022); ‘Between The Dog And The Wolf’, ADA Contemporary Art Gallery, Accra (2022); Memories of The Future, Post Gallery Zurich, Zurich (2021); ‘I See in Colour’, Home, London (2021). Group exhibitions include; As She Is, Soho Revue, London (2024); Like a Beacon Against the Cold, lbf Contemporary, London (2024); Digestif, Palazzo Monti, Brescia (2024); The Painted Room, Grimm Gallery, Amsterdam (2023); Poetics of Falsifications, Harpers, Hamptons (2023); Night, Light, Cob Gallery, London (2023); Landscapes, Taymour Grahne Projects, Noho Showrooms, London (2022); On Love, HOME, London (2022); Colour Culture Feelings, Ojiri Gallery, London (2022). Philips was awarded the Fribourg Philanthropies Prize in 2023.