Anne et Patrick Poirier

After their studies at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs, Anne and Patrick Poirier spent four years at the Villa Médicis in Rome. They decided to work together right from the beginning of their stay in 1968. Abandoning their respective egos, they united their ideas and sensibilities, and their works, which were signed jointly, became the fruit of this common effort. They were no longer solitary artists working in their workshops in search of a personal language, but travelers, site surveyors, discoverers of different civilizations, religions, and cultures (Far East, Near East, Middle East, Central America, the United States...). Refusing the conventional roles of “sculptor” and “painter,” they assumed those of “archeologist” and “architect,” roles that are interchangeable according to the circumstances. Theirs was no longer a question of formal research, but through an artistic approach grounded in the humanities, one of a voyage through memory, which they consider a fundamental value, the basis of any understanding between beings and societies. As children of war (Anne born in 1941 in Marseille, Patrick in 1942 in Nantes), they denounced the fragility of civilizations and cultures, and their esthetic is often that of the fragment, the ruin, or the catastrophe. As interdisciplinary artists, since over fifty years they have created a polymorphic and visionary body of works.