Artistic approach
“In 2018, while preparing a solo exhibition at the Villa Medici in Rome, we created a large chandelier with Régis Mathieu. He provided us with materials that had been used to create the chandeliers in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.
With his characteristic generosity, he opened his Aladdin's cave and workshops to us, where he stores all the precious treasures used to make his chandeliers: crystals of all shapes, sizes, origins, styles and periods. Blackened, gilded and silvered bronze, a multitude of shapes and materials, different levels of opacity, shadow and light made our heads spin with wonder, poor artists that we were. He let us have our pick of these marvels, use them as we saw fit and transform a chandelier into a light sculpture in our own contemporary style!
At the time, we were very concerned (and we still are) about the violence that reigned in the world (and reigns now more than ever) and the catastrophic upheaval threatened by climate change, and threatened still today. It seemed to us that the world was completely upside down! So we flipped the chandelier, creating a completely different perspective, and added some very aggressive elements to the luxurious original structure: knives with bloody blades and sharp needles, as well as objects made of less opulent materials - glass, plastic, fake pearls, and so on.
Since 2018, time has passed, as has the Covid-19 pandemic. The world is still upside down, more and more so, we are still living in topsy-turvy land; but today, we are two artists who have been working together for 56 years, who are trying to take a step back and achieve some wisdom, and we have chosen to add a note of hope and light (isn't that the function of a chandelier after all?) and perhaps a touch of humour, to our new chandelier”. Anne and Patrick Poirier
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Anne and Patrick POIRIER
FRANCE
Anne Poirier was born on 31 March 1941 in Marseilles and Patrick Poirier on 5 May 1942 in Nantes. After studying at the Paris Decorative Arts School, they were resident artists at the Villa Médicis from 1967 to 1972. Right from the start of their time there, they decided to work together and to pool their ideas and sensitivities.
Anne and Patrick Poirier are true travellers through memory, which they consider to be the basis of all intelligence between human beings and societies. They explore sites and remains from ancient Greek, Roman, Mayan and Indian civilisations and bring them back to life through models and reduced scale reconstitutions. They are sculptors, architects and archaeologists, all at the same time. They are interested in the psyche and continuously strive to understand its structures through a variety of metaphors.
Using mythological tales as an inspiration and by exploring real or imaginary cities, the work they create together is a metaphor for time and memory. Past and future are closely intertwined, giving us a picture of the fragility of cultures and human beings.
Since their son, Alain-Guillaume, passed away in 2002, they have been living and working in Lourmarin, Provence.
In France, they are represented by the Galerie Mitterrand, Paris, and in Italy by the Galleria Fumagalli in Milan, as well as the Galleria Studio G7 in Bologna.
