ANNE AND PATRICK POIRIER
The French artist couple Anne and Patrick Poirier are presenting models and architectural installations on the ground floor of the Panorama Building, created from children’s toys or elements of industrial machinery. Through their uniform color scheme, they seem to spread across the floor and throughout the space like oil stains, seemingly displacing nature and human life. On an aesthetic and emotional level, they evoke industrial landscapes. Devastated buildings, ruins, military installations, soldiers, airplanes, and stranded ships are elements of the depicted worlds, which bear a resemblance to film sets. In small format, yet no less oppressive, violence, war, and destruction are present in many places. Alongside these are deserted urban scenes and utopian-seeming cityscapes that exhibit a distinctive aesthetic as well as an unexpected attention to detail. What connects these various typified landscapes is that they cannot be localized and remain anonymous.
The models on display in the exhibition—all created between 1999 and 2000—are part of a thematic area that the artist couple has been exploring for many years. This involves an examination of history and culture, which have left their mark on architecture and the landscape for millennia. Ostia Antica was the first architectural model that Anne and Patrick Poirier built in the 1970s using thousands of miniature bricks. Curiosity and a spirit of discovery drove them to recreate the scaled-down setting of the buried ancient city—a memory and testament to human life. Even today—often unconsciously—wars serve as the starting point for the work of these artists, who, born in 1942, belong to the postwar generation. The models encourage reflection on the past and the future, nature and humanity. In doing so, Anne and Patrick Poirier always draw upon memory, which is the origin of all cultures and which influences and guides our thoughts, feelings, and actions.
As you climb the steps toward the panoramic painting created by Marquard Wocher between 1809 and 1814, you find yourself in the heart of an idyllic small town. The view extends beyond the city of Thun and its surroundings, but also takes you back to the petit-bourgeois life of the 19th century, which seems not far removed from Arcadia. Against the backdrop of the often apocalyptic landscape scenes created by the artist duo, Wocher’s wondrous view of the city of Thun appears even more idyllic, even more idealized. In contrast, the impressively staged worlds of Anne and Patrick Poirier stand as visions of the future.
