Press release, 24 March 2020 The Centre des monuments nationaux presents the exhibition Anima mundi Anne and Patrick Poirier at Abbaye du Thoronet - Le Thoronet Abbey New dates to be determined Poster of the exhibition “Anima mundi” Press contacts: Agence Dezarts: Noalig Tanguy +33 (0)6 70 56 63 24 [email protected] CMN Press Centre: Maddy Adouritz +33 (0)1 44 61 22 45 [email protected] Find all CMN press releases at: presse.monuments-nationaux.fr Press release The Centre des monuments nationaux has invited Anne and Patrick Poirier to present the “Anima mundi” exhibition, a continuation of their work that captures the notion of fragility and the importance of memory. At Le Thoronet Abbey, a masterpiece of Cistercian architecture, the two artists will reawaken the memory of the sites through artworks and installations that appeal to the senses. Displayed along the visitor circuit, these fifteen original creations will enter into a dialogue with the monument, its history and the role of its spaces. Le Thoronet Abbey, built between 1160 and 1190, accommodated around thirty monks in the 13th century. For over one hundred years, the monument retained within its walls the memory of the passage, rituals, gestures and prayers of these men until it fell into decline, a process completed during the French Revolution. The restoration work, begun in the 19th century, will enable the abbey to recover its original appearance after having been used for agricultural purposes. Passionate about architecture and history, Anne and Patrick Poirier have exhibited in religious buildings for many years, ranging from the Chapelle de la Salpêtrière in Paris in 1983 to their exhibition at the Couvent de La Tourette in Eveux in 2013. Their exhibition at Le Thoronet Abbey will give visitors the opportunity to rediscover the remains of the abbey, where prayer, labour, reading and meditation in silence set the tempo of monastic life. “Our project offers the visitor to this centre of architecture and spirituality a number of works and installations scattered inside and outside the abbey. We wanted these art interventions to be discreet, unostentatious and proportionate, respectful of this place of the soul and of memory. They appeal both to the senses – hearing, sight and smell – and to memory as well as to the visitor’s spirit, and are inspired by the genius loci”. Anne and Patrick Poirier, Lourmarin, 25 August 2019 Curator: Laure Martin La voix des Vents [The Voice of the Winds] & L’arbre aux Cosmos 2019, courtesy Galerie Mitterrand, Paris © Anne larmes [The Tree of Tears] 2019, courtesy Galerie & Patrick Poirier. ADAGP. Jean-Christophe Lett Mitterrand, Paris © Anne & Patrick Poirier. ADAGP. Photo Jean-Christophe Lett This exhibition will be the subject of a publication by Éditions du patrimoine in the “Un artiste, un monument” collection. 2 The exhibition Designed especially for Le Thoronet Abbey, the fifteen works presented by Anne and Patrick Poirier will trace a subtle path between reminiscence, evocation and metaphor, accompanying visitors as they explore the Cistercian abbey. The public will move between interior and exterior spaces, beginning with the path leading to the former gatehouse, along which the visitor will be welcomed by La voix des vents [The Voice of the Winds], composed of gently tinkling bronze bells hanging here and there in the trees. This installation, which is repeated within the grounds of the abbey, is inspired by the couple’s memories of their trips to Nepal where, “Buddhist tradition considers these sounds to have the power to ward off evil spirits and give thanks to the gods”. At the entrance to the abbey church, the visitor will hear these tinkling sounds emanating from numerous small bells hung in the nettle tree. Randomly placed and varying in intensity, their echoes, which change according to the power of the elements, create a sound space, an invisible frontier with the outside world. In the enclosure next to the former tithe barn, the glass vials of L’arbe aux larmes [The Tree of Tears] installation are reminiscent in their shape of the lachrymatories used in Roman funerary rituals. They shimmer in the branches of the majestic holm oak watched by visitors sitting in the shade of its foliage while bronze bells tinkle in the wind. Before returning to the abbey church, at the bottom of the recessed fountain, below the double-flight stone staircase leading to the site of the ancient vineyards, visitors will find oversized eyes like giants’ eyes, which seem to follow them as they walk around. At several points in the circuit, visitors will come across this leitmotiv of the eye, called Du regard des statues [The Gaze of Statues], an anonymous witness to time and history, an observer of nature and of men, a mute guardian of memory and oblivion, omnipresent in the couple’s work. In the abbey church, Oblio (Oubli) [Oblio (Oblivion)] invites the visitor to write a word, a name, a thought, a dream, a prayer on fragments of communion wafers laid out on two copper trays gilded with gold leaf, then to place them in a basin filled with water. A symbol of purification, water here becomes the ephemeral receptacle of many thoughts, the memory of which disappears as their fragile medium dissolves. On the floor, in the axis of the choir Memoria, mundi (Mémoire du Oblio 2019, courtesy Galerie Mitterrand, monde) [Memoria, mundi (Memory of the World)] also refers Paris. © Anne & Patrick Poirier. ADAGP. to the idea of memory, a key focus in these artists’ work and Photo Jean-Christophe Lett. embodied in the recurring motif of a schematic brain. The carpet, in the form of an ellipse, is bordered by Latin words listing the themes indefatigably explored by Anne and Patrick Poirier: memoria, natura, anima, archeologia, utopia… woven in wool, silk and bamboo fibre, materials that absorb the light in different ways, presents a changing image of the work thus emphasising its metaphorical dimension. Echoing Memoria mundi, Reflets de l’âme [Reflections of the Soul], is a pâte de verre brain, lit from within. It stands in the axis of the high altar on an engraved, elliptical mirror, in which the sparkling reflections of its blue, pink and white shades vary like human thoughts and feelings. In the same vein, Les vibrations de l’âme [The Vibrations of the Soul] offers an allegory in sound of emotions where the musicality of two large copper gongs, placed on either side of the transept, now and again, produces an enchanting echo made sublime by the abbey’s acoustics. At the private view, Anne and Patrick Poirier will perform a composition for gongs and cello by Éric Tanguy. 3 Reflets de l’âme [Reflections of the Soul] 2019, Les vibrations de l’âme [The Vibrations of the courtesy Galerie Mitterrand, Paris. © Anne & Soul] 2019, courtesy Galerie Mitterrand, Paris. Patrick Poirier. ADAGP. Photo Jean-Christophe © Anne & Patrick Poirier. ADAGP. Photo Jean- Lett. Christophe Lett. Further on, the visitor will come to the abbot’s bedroom, now La chambre des rêves et de l’oubli [The Room of Dreams and Oblivion], a work inviting contemplation and meditation. In front of its one small window, a red silk taffeta hanging, embroidered with the words Sparire nel silenzio (Disappear in the Silence) and reaching down to the floor, filters the light of this intimate, austere space. From the floor, carpeted with white feathers, a rustic table emerges, on which are placed various objects: books, stuffed birds, a skull, etc, evoking the attributes of Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Jerome, as well as their love of and their interest in nature. Following this, in the monks’ dormitory, the visitor will be able to observe large drawings, arranged on desks, around each of the twenty windows, recalling the manuscripts and antiphonaries patiently drawn up and written out by the monks, in particular the “very rich hours” of the Middle Ages. The contrast between the coloured intensity of the motifs and the sombre, dramatic even, content of the words, reveals, to anyone who knows how to look and takes the time to look, the relevance of the questions and fears that lie within Les chants du désespoir [The Songs of Despair], a work with all the visionary hallmarks of Anne and Patrick Poirier. La chamber des rêves et de l’oubli [The Room Les chants du désespoir [The Songs of Despair] of Dreams and Oblivion] 2019, courtesy 2019, courtesy Galerie Mitterrand, Paris. © Galerie Mitterrand, Paris. © Anne & Patrick Anne & Patrick Poirier. ADAGP. Photo Jean- Poirier. ADAGP. Photo Jean-Christophe Lett. Christophe Lett 4 Once outside, a large schematic brain in the centre of the cloister, formed of pebbles of white Carrara marble, recalls those displayed in the abbey church. Visible both from the upper walkway and the level of the cloister galleries, the installation Anima mundi (L’âme du monde) [Anima mundi (The Soul of the World)] is striking in its monumentality and its perfect integration in the space bordered by boxwood, the contours of the brain outlining a luminous mineral garden. Close to the sacristy, placed directly on the floor of the Armarium, where the books were kept, a block of stone gilded with gold leaf, found in an ancient stream that ran at the foot of the abbey, is topped with a sphere of lazurite suggesting the pupil of a giant eye. This sculpture with its contrasting forms and assured refinement, titled Cosmos (L’univers) [Cosmos (The Universe)], refers to the mystery and wealth of the world. Visitors will continue to travel in time with Archè (L’origine) [Archè (The Origin)], which reveals a marble eye. Emerging from a thick carpet of plants picked from under the trees in the neighbouring forest, as if unearthed from an excavation site, it expresses the idea of a distant, forgotten past, of which the Poiriers are the archaeologists.