Volume, Space, Installation
“Pierre Ardouvin’s work is as visually obvious as it is psychologically uncertain. Exacerbated material simplicity vs. psychic disorder, giving rise to dissonance, fractures of the percepts to the affects. The light is dark, the enchantment glaucous, the prosaic magic, the sinister feast. Everywhere, we witness an imperceptible mutation from the glitz to the pallid, from the sparkling to the blinding, from the preciousness to the trinket. Paradoxes? Tensions, rather. Behind his falsely humorous or casual gestures, Pierre Ardouvin develops a hard, stiff work, irreconcilable with the world. The clarity of the devices, which generally conceals nothing of their simplicity, shows a brutal generosity, even empathy – though not playful – with some of the most ordinary, even vulgar motives and materials of contemporary society”.
Guillaume Désanges.
