ANNE and PATRICK POIRIER
“Fall of the Giants, 1988–89” 1989 - 2024
Monumental installation in eight parts in marble and stainless steel. Dimensions variable.
“Fall of the Giants” was developed between 1988 and 1989 for the Storm King Art Center, later becoming part of the Mallin Collection in New York, until being acquired by Usina de Arte in 2024.
The installation joins the classicism of the past to contemporary life, not only to inspire the reverie associated with classical fragments, or to evoke a romantic nostalgia for the past, but as a search for self, for stasis in a chaotic world. The Fall of the Giants provides a fitting analogy for fin-de-siecle angst, for the restlessness and disillusionment of contemporary life.
Anne Poirier
Marseille, France, 1941
Patrick Poirier
Nantes, France, 1942
French art duo, both live and work in Lourmarin, France
https://mitterrand.com/en/artists/18-anne-et-patrick-poirier/
Anne and Patrick Poirier, besides being artists, are also architects and archaeologists. In their works, they use the power to question memory and the fragility of civilizations. The aesthetics of ruins are one of the main elements they employ to interpret the relationship between past and present.
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 travellers, site surveyors, discoverers of different civilizations, religions, and cultures (Far East, Near East, Middle East, Central America, the United States...).
