About

Paul Pouvreau was born in 1956 in Aulnay-sous-Bois. He splits his time between Montreuil and Argenton-sur-Creuse and is a professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie (ENSP) in Arles.

His artistic work has been featured in a wide variety of exhibitions in France and abroad: the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Centre photographique d’Ile-de-France (CPIF), the Rencontres d’Arles, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Val-de-Marne (MAC VAL), the Regional Centre for Contemporary Art (CRAC) in Sète, the Regional Collection of Contemporary Art (FRAC) for Basse-Normandie in Caen and the FRAC for Corsica, the Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire in Paris and Brussels, the Ho Chi Minh City Museum of Fine Arts in Vietnam, the Galerie Nei Licht in Dudelange, Luxembourg, as well as Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, USA, to name only a few.

His works can be seen in numerous both private and public collections, including the National Foundation for Contempoary Art (FNAC), the FRAC for Alsace, Corsica, Franche-Comté, Limousin and Provence-Alpes-Côtes d’Azur, the Artothèques of Caen, Vitré, Limoges, Lyon, Nantes and Pessac, the Musée de Valence, the Centre Georges Pompidou and others.

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Since the early 1980s, Paul Pouvreau has been developing a body of photographic work that highlights ordinary, insignificant objects: domestic appliances, boxes, plastic bags, dust… His aim is “to focus attention on those little things of no consequence that often house just about everything”. While plumbing the real, Pouvreau also dips into the History of Art and sets up his photographs as installations. What interests him is the way in which the visual signs he chooses (logos and various types of packaging) dialogue with both everyday space and the space of the exhibition. Continually questioning the image and its representation, his artistic work integrates drawings and collages as well.