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Gilles Pourtier

Born in 1980 in Romans-sur-Isère, Gilles Pourtier lives and works in Marseille. He began by studying Modern Literature, before embarking on a glassmaking course in Nancy at the Centre Européen de Recherche et de Formation aux Arts Verriers (CERFAV), which led him to work for four years in London at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design University College and then at the Westminster Adult Education Service.

In 2006 he entered the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie d’Arles (ENSP) from which he graduated in 2009, the year in which he participated in the exhibition “Une attention particulière” during the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie. During his three years of study in Arles, he developed a personal work combining photography, multimedia and video. Since then, his photographic works have been shown on numerous occasions in France and abroad. His approach is in a quasi-ethnographic vein.

“What strikes one immediately in Gilles Pourtier‘s work, besides the visual pleasure it generates, is the literary charge that the titles of the series or individual pieces seem to carry with them: Le Château, Un peu plus loin de l’autre côté de la rue des néons clignotaient deux fois moins vite que mon coeur, Must We Mean What We Say, All Tomorrow’s Parties noir et joyeux, etc. As if the images were indexed, vectored by narratives, poems or complex philosophical developments.
Although informed by a vast culture, the glance implemented is of a great simplicity: presence of these objects and these insistent events, taken in a dreamy exactitude and that this literary tropism would turn towards a kind of verbal sun. However, there is no illusion of objectivity here, no belief in an original purity of things, towards which the view would allow us to go back by who knows what fantasy of impersonality: things always mean from the start: they are always connoted by the simple fact of being noticed, framed, captured in the ocean of the visible. To see is to see as.” Text translated from Arnaud Claass

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Biography

Gilles Pourtier was born in 1980 in Romans-sur-Isère. He lives and works in Marseille.

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

  • Etudes de Lettres Modernes
    CERFAV (Centre Européen de Recherche et de Formation aux Arts Verriers), Nancy Surrey Institute of Art and Design University College, Londres
    Westminster Adult Education Service, Londres
  • 2006 – 09 / ENSP (Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie), Arles

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

  • 2022 -2023 / Filiations 2 & la Donation Albers-Honegger, Espace de l’Art Concret, Mouans-Sartoux
  • 2021 – 2022 / Structures de l’apparence, Point du Jour, Cherbourg
  • 2021 / Rodéo Sauvage, château de Servières, Marseille
  • 2018 / Deucalion et Pyrrha, La Cartine, Marseille
  • 2017 / A home is not a house, Straat Gallery, Marseille
  • 2013 / Vztahy (exposition suite à la résidence de création), Kosice, Slovaquie
  • 2011 / Un peu plus loin de l’autre côté de la rue des néons clignotaient deux fois moins vite que mon coeur, La Compagnie, Marseille
  • 2011 / La grande surface de réparation, 3bisF, Aix-en-Provence

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

  • 2022 / Lignes de vie / Life lines, Private Choice, Paris
  • 2021 / Odyssée / Odyssey, Private Choice, Paris
  • 2020 / Voyage intérieur / Inner journey, Private Choice, Paris
  • 2019 / Affinités / Affinities, Private Choice, Paris
  • 2016 / They shoot horses, they don’t demolish barns, L’Escaut, Bruxelles
  • 2015 / Exposition du Prix des Résidents des Ateliers de la Ville de Marseille, Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille
  • 2013 / Entretenir des choses matérielles, Forum Kunst & Architektur, Essen, Allemagne
  • 2012 / Ceux qui arrivent, Le Bal, Paris
  • 2012 / Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui
  • 2009 / Une attention particulière, Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d’Arles

RESIDENCIES

  • 2022 / Résidence Marbrerie Anastay, Saint-Remy-de-Provence
  • 2013 / Résidence de création en collaboration avec la photographe Anne-Claire Broc’h, février et octobre aux îles de Batz et d’Ouessant
  • 2013 / Résidence de création (Capitale Européenne de la Culture en 2013) , Kosice, Slovaquie
  • 2011 / Résidence de recherche au 3bisF, Aix-en-Provence
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