The French artist Philippe Cognée employs an unusual painting technique using wax paint, which he then irons onto his canvases thereby deforming recognizable structures under heat. Through a transformation of shapes, distortion of color, and blurred lines, Cognée adds a layer of subjectivity to the depiction of historic and/or highly symbolic places. In the triptych Rome (2003), St. Peter’s Basilica is rendered across three panels, but further dissected into separate sections in which the perspectives, scale, color, shadows and density of line vary. Cognée has made similar studies of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, and the HSBC Bank in Hong Kong. In each work, massive sites of architecture viewed by millions are complicated and abstracted, alluding to the unique experiences and memories individuals create of shared public sites.