Anne et Patrick Poirier

Anne et Patrick Poirier
Period: 1969-1971
Occupation: Sculptor

After their studies at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs and numerous trips to the Orient, the Middle East and the United States, Anne and Patrick Poirier spent four years at the Villa Médicis in Rome. Right from the start of their stay, in 1967, they decided to work together: they brought together their ideas and sensibilities, and their jointly signed works became the fruits of this sharing. They were no longer solitary artists working in their studios in search of a personal language, but travelers, surveyors of sites, discoverers of different civilizations, religions and cultures. Rejecting the conventional roles of “sculptor” and “painter”, they take on the interchangeable roles of “archaeologist” and “architect”. Children of war (Anne was born in Marseille in 1941, Patrick in Nantes in 1942), they denounce the fragility of civilizations and cultures, and their aesthetic is often that of the fragment, the ruin, the catastrophe.

 

In over fifty years of working together, they have had solo exhibitions in numerous museums and cultural institutions: Neue Galerie-Sammlung Ludwig, Aachen (1973); Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (1977); CAPC, Bordeaux (1977); Musée national d’art moderne Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1978); Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (1978); MoMA, New York (1978); Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (1978). PS1, New York (1980); Festival d’automne, chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière, Paris (1983); Musée d’art contemporain, Montreal (1983) The Brooklyn Museum, New York (1984); Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich (1988), Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna (1994); Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne (1999) ; The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (1999-2000); CREDAC, Ivry-sur-Seine (2001) ; La Verrière, Brussels (2004); Festival d’Avignon, chapelle Saint-Charles, Avignon (2009); Couvent de la Tourette, Eveux (2013) ; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes (2014) ; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain Saint-Etienne Métropole, Saint-Etienne (2016-2017) ; Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden, Wuppertal  (2016-2017) ; Maison européenne de la photographie, Paris (2017) ; De Pont Museum, Tillburg, Netherlands (2018).

 

They have participated in major international events including the Venice Biennale (1976, 1980, 1984); documenta VI, Cassel (1977); Istanbul Biennale (1989); Vienna Festival, Austria (1991); Lyon Biennale (2000); Busan Biennale, South Korea (2002); Buenos-Aires Biennale (2002) ; Valencia Biennale, Spain (2003); Havana Biennale (2006); Espace Louis Vuitton, Tokyo (2014); Echigo-Tsumari Triennale, Japan (2015);Carambolages, Grand Palais, Paris (2016).

Their work can be found in numerous public and private collections around the world.