Dear Shaded Viewers,
After the tumults of the numerous art fairs that took place in the resurrected Grand Palais, an impressive exhibition is taking place in the Mitterand Galerie. In this secluded space of rue du temple, a selection of artworks are going to make you feel the impact of history.
Anne and Patrick Poirier, unusual french artists are organizing their latest exhibition : 56th excavation campaign. Understand this title as their 56th year of career but also of marriage. Staging their life as their career started in a funny situation that became their artistic identity. Before going to an international congress in the 1960s, they had to get their passport. Anne wrote architect and Patrick historian.Then, it became the conducting line of their career. This blurring between life and reality seems rather funny. But the observations that they re-transmitted in their artworks are haunting. This elegant couple are our Chiron that made us navigate through time and human nature. What is memory? Is mankind protective or destructive ? What will soon disappear? Those are the main questions that made us dwell on the vertigo of history. Traces are important, especially to Patrick that lost his father when he was one. He only knew him through stories and pictures that his mother kept.
Placing themselves as our guides, they présent us pluri-disciplinary works where regularity meets sensibility. The most important is that it starts with a trip, Anne tells us. We collect some works but also the plans, everything. That inventory becomes magic when they stage it into vertiginous forms. The Domus Aurea herbers are one of the first examples. There are tree leaves stuck into coated pages assembled in a pyramid. Anne tells us that they were done in the 80s. They were invited to do some installation works, often black in classical institutions such as the Salpêtrière Chapel. In the end, our installations are like stagings where the visitor is actually the main character. We couldn’t agree more with the Palmyre tapestry : a photography, that transform the grain of it into soft lines.It comes from a picture that Patrick collected when he traveled there. Choosing tapestry is also an homage to the tradition of carpet making.
Other works, much smaller , are also striking paper works of stampings with washi paper on Roman tombs when they were several times in Rome. They are samples with slight enhancements, slight changes, leaves or few words by their signature red handwriting. Those words also are sounding like omens or feelings in a particular moment. We write all day says Anne, poems, false diaries, we can keep a few or make a full diary. You could read a diary of an explorer by flashing a QR code next to the Ghost City. Those round shaped domes are the most moving part of the exhibition. Poirier made it after Anne had a dream about their late son Alain Guillaume. Mother and son gathered but then explored that city and realised it was a necropolis. No time to lose when Anne woke up, with Patrick they collected some clay in a workshop next to their Lourmarin home. Shaped in a almond form, that ceramic city is far from decorative. We are in front of our fragility, the weight of absence. They are a realistic side knowing the destruction of everything but also a idealistic part like we did in a self portrait of Patrick with two landscapes behind his head.
In the end, Poirier is a couple who left you with a boost. Elegant, discreet tempered, they are also two lyrical personas : eager to make amusing creations without a delusional glance. Just like their discreet self portraits. They are on the side, like Italian masters putting themselves on their canvas in another profession. Yet they are still standing and seem stoic to face any storm that could happen. They are still traveling and have numerous inaugurations for the years to come. That actuality continues to nurture a new series of work. Such as the Chaumont embroidery realised by Cecile Le Belz inspired by an orchid flower that Patrick picked last spring for their exhibition. « On a stormy day » he tends to precise. Do not miss their first creation in a new medium : The Upside down World Chandeliers at Regis Mathieu Galerie. They are a savoury mix of cutlery and baroque objects with pointing down knives and candles that are maybe telling the ambiance of our times. An inevivable destruction with colors and chachkis.
Later,
Mael Heinz
