Anne & Patrick Poirier

by :  Marinella Paderni, Francesco Poli, et al. | Sep 1, 2007

French artists Anne and Patrick Poirier (born in 1941 and 1942 respectively) grew up during World War II and saw the destruction wrought by bombing, invasion, and collaboration. Though they have worked in a variety of media--photography, drawing, installation and monumental public sculpture--their oeuvre has always dealt with themes surrounding memory. This collection of 30 years of work is full of archeology, ruins, memento mori (including skulls holding miniature models of ancient monuments), disintegration, loss and remembering. As they articulate it, "we believe that ignorance or the destruction of cultural memory brings in its wake every sort of oblivion, falsehood and excess…and that we must, with all the modest means at our disposal, oppose this generalized amnesia and destruction." The Poiriers have been the subjects of solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, among others.