Colette Pourroy

November 4 – December 10, 2023

Opening : Saturday November 4

6pm – 9pm

Colette Pourroy has made a name for herself by exploring her family in several episodes and in several books. At Mind’s Eye, we have presented three of her exhibitions on this theme.

Here, she turns to the soul and its relationship to our body. Movement and blurring are the means she has chosen to express them in this new series, État d’âme. She has already used these techniques in her previous work, notably in the series on her sister Ève, but here she pushes them further.

The images, reminiscent of certain photographs by Francesca Woodman or Duane Michals, leave ample room for the viewer’s sensibility and imagination.

SOUL-STATES

After all the deaths, all the cherished ones whose stories I told in my family saga, a desire awakened in me to evoke the soul and its relationship with the body.

Between the collective conscience and unconscious, the symbolism, all that speaks of the unseen, the infinite, the subtle, writing the unclear makes way for the imaginary.

This living, moving photography shatters the divine: the intervals, gaps, punctuation, the invisible.

It is like automatic writing; what comes forth is unexpected, beyond my will, mysterious, yet fervently sought.

Drawing with light, painting with chiaroscuro and without artifice, only the spiritual binds these glimmering threads together.

Colette Pourroy (September 2023)
Translation: Paul H. Rogers (September 2023)

COLETTE POURROY

After studies at the Villa Arson in Nice and thirty years as a graphic designer for publishers in Paris, Colette Pourroy, who had been taking photographs since the age of 13, decided to exhibit her work in 2003, following the death of her mother.

Over the following ten years, she exhibited her photographs of trees in black and white (BnF collection with Anne Biroleau) and colour in private collections in France and abroad. These resulted in two series, “Peau d’arbres” and “Le Sexe des arbres”, both published by Vis-à-Vis international.

The artist would later realise that these photos of trees symbolised the roots of her family saga.

A workshop in 2008 with Michael Ackerman, decisive for her freedom of vision and spirit, gave her the impetus, the awareness of others and the place of the human on the path.

From 2013 to 2023, this family saga (which began with the figure of the father) was exhibited in galleries and published by André Frère éditions.
It comprises four series, plus one on the couple (selected and published by MEP in 2014).
An extract from each series is included in the public collections of the BnF and the MEP, thanks to Héloïse Conesa and Pascal Hoël.

BOOK SIGNING

Colette Pourroy will be signing her books at Paris Photo on the stand of her publisher André Frère on Thursday 9 November at 3pm.