Anne Poirier, born in 1941 in Marseille, and Patrick Poirier, born in 1942 in Nantes, are one of the few artist couples to work together on joint projects. Since meeting in the late 1960s, Anne and Patrick Poirier have developed pioneering work on memory, the weight of the past in our cultures, and the way in which the humanities can convey a relationship with reality. During their four-year stay at the Villa Medici in Rome in the early 1970s, they developed a working method that has since become a model.
Edited and introduced by Damien Sausset, 1 + 1 = 1 is an anthology bringing together the personal writings, diaries, exhibition texts and interviews of Anne and Patrick Poirier written between 1971 and 2024.
“Their works emerge from a shared experience, a common quest in which each artist nourishes the other, where journeys, discoveries of ancient sites and creations in the studio all represent stances that negate the individual ‘I’ in favour of an indistinct path embodied by the couple they form. At the heart of this process, writing is central, both as a method for crystallising ideas and, above all, as a mode of autonomous expression, having become a form of artistic practice on a par with sculpture or painting.
Rarely studied in its own right, this body of writing, spanning over fifty years, addresses essential questions such as the notion of the fragment, the ruin and catastrophe, as well as the concepts of individual mythologies or testimony in our contemporary societies. The numerous texts gathered here bear witness to this variety of ideas and the evolution of a shared body of thought that remains in constant resonance with current world events.” Damien Sausset.
The book is enriched with numerous previously unpublished photographs.
Published to mark the exhibition L’Odyssée de l’oubli at the Musée des Beaux-arts de Nantes (22 May – 30 August 2026), the book will be signed by the artists at the bookshop and gift shop of the Musée d’arts de Nantes on Saturday 23 May from 7pm to 8pm.
14 x 20.5 cm
640 pages
62 black-and-white illustrations
ISBN 978-2-84056-894-0
Distributed by UD
Price: €25
