In Le Havre, Philippe De Gobert continues the singular and polymorphous work that characterises him, between architecture, sculpture, model building and photography. By putting the world in miniature and reconstructing it from scratch, he sketches a poetic portrait of the city rebuilt by Auguste Perret, a sort of double that is disturbingly real, and reinvents the history of its rebirth.

As a preamble to this “photographic tale”, Philippe De Gobert invites us to share his vision of the “marvellous in architecture”: “a playful and poetic approach to architecture, with its clumsiness and errors, concocted seriously by an artist, without the rigour that a scientist or art historian would have applied to it”.

This catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition Philippe De Gobert. Du merveilleux en architecture au conte photographique at the MuMa musée d’art moderne André Malraux, Le Havre from 29 May to 7 November 2021.