After studying photography at the University of Paris VIII and video the Fresnoy studio national des arts contemporains in Tourcoing, Laurent Pernot has been developing a polymorphous body of work over the past fifteen years.
His visual language revolves around references to nature and poetry, literature and philosophy, the passage of time and memory. And his works sometimes resonate with places, objects or historical figures (Bas Jan Ader, Hannah Arendt, Roland Barthes, Léon Blum, Eugène Delacroix, Émilie Dickinson, Françoise Héritier, Friedrich Hölderlin, Novalis, Fernando Pessoa, etc.).
Through interdisciplinary installations, whether discreet or monumental, Laurent Pernot proposes visual and conceptual elements that imply a dimension of contemplation, a certain attention to the forms, language or materials adopted, and that sometimes lead the viewer into a time out of time, playing with our perception. Time seems to stand still, the better to meditate on the fragility of life, of our shared memory, and on our relationship to the long term as opposed to the ephemeral destiny of the human being.
Combining impermanence with the beauty of the world, love with eternity, memory with loss, poetry with melancholy, each work provokes a thought experiment that confronts us with the paradoxes that inhabit us and, in so doing, invites us to rethink what links each human being to nature and to what we call Humanity.
His work can be found in museums, foundations and collections around the world, and he is represented by Galerie Marguo in Paris.
No man is master of the wind, each one holds his sail as best he can. Laurent Pernot
How great are the storms stirred up by man, that little animal who vanishes like smoke! Erasmus (Complainte de la paix, 1516)
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Extract from an interview with Bernard Le Magoarou, Centre des Monuments Nationaux magazine, #13, 2022 :
What are your sources of inspiration?
First of all, I’d say poetry and philosophy. I’ve always been sensitive to the relationship between the two, just as I’ve always been attracted to authors who share a certain philosophy of the human condition, such as Lucretius, Hölderlin, Novalis, Emily Dickinson, Edouard Glissant or Virginia Woolf, for example. Secondly, when you’re an artist, creation is a daily task, and inspiration a state of alertness that encourages constant observation. Anything can be the source or subject of a project, from the contemplations of nature to the irruptions of chance. Finally, I’d like to mention love, an essential source in my life and a force that, like the current of a stream, turns the wheels and waters the flowers on its banks. Loving raises us above a reality that sometimes overtakes the imaginary.