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'The French artist Gilbert Peyre (born 1947) is impossible to classify: artist, inventor, D.I.Y. genius, mechanic or in the words of Ben Vautier a ‘Realist Tinquely’. But Gilbert Peyre really has nothing in common with any artistic movement at all. Since the beginning of the 1980’s he has enjoyed himself by endowing sculptures / objects with the ability to move which he shows in the window of his Montmartre studio before exhibiting them, for example, in the provinces, Paris (Centre Georges Pompidou, Halle Saint Pierre) and Berlin.
'In his own sculptur Opéras as well as in his plastic art installations Gilbert Peyre makes alive his wishing, tender, fragile, affecting machines and denounces with a humour tinted with surrealism the ridiculous agitation of our society which does not stop taking itself seriously. Successively Plastic Artist, Stage Director, Visionary, this unclassable artist is mixing with grace the technology, the drama, poetry, the absurdity, and with nothing, says all to us.
'Peyre is perhaps best known outside of France due to the prominent appearance of his mechanical devices in the films 'Delicatessan', 'City of Lost Children', 'Alien: Resurrection', 'Amelie', and 'Micmacs' by the director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. French art critic Gilbert Lascault says: "The cosmos of Gilbert Peyre is at the same time a museum of Arts and Métiers, an engine room, a funfair, a music hall, an opera, a spectacle of conjurer or magician, a phantasmagoria, a ceremony, a liturgy, a cavalcade, a procession, a zoo, a circus, an orgy, a mechanical comedy, a comical apocalypse".'-- Le Petit Festival du Theatre
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'Mangemange' (2008)
'Haltérophile' (1987 - 1990)
'Ballerines' (2009)
'le distributeur d'idées' (2009)
'Rap Danse' (1998)
'l'ourson irrévérencieux' (2009)
from 'Issue de secours' (2008)
from 'Cupidon, Propriétaire de l'immeuble situé sur l'Enfer et le Paradis' (2009)
Portrait of Gilbert Peyre (in French; 2009)
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p.s. Hey. I don't think Gilbert Peyre's work is known at all outside of France, and that's a total shame for reasons that I hope you will gather today. Is everybody still in one piece?
'The French artist Gilbert Peyre (born 1947) is impossible to classify: artist, inventor, D.I.Y. genius, mechanic or in the words of Ben Vautier a ‘Realist Tinquely’. But Gilbert Peyre really has nothing in common with any artistic movement at all. Since the beginning of the 1980’s he has enjoyed himself by endowing sculptures / objects with the ability to move which he shows in the window of his Montmartre studio before exhibiting them, for example, in the provinces, Paris (Centre Georges Pompidou, Halle Saint Pierre) and Berlin.
'In his own sculptur Opéras as well as in his plastic art installations Gilbert Peyre makes alive his wishing, tender, fragile, affecting machines and denounces with a humour tinted with surrealism the ridiculous agitation of our society which does not stop taking itself seriously. Successively Plastic Artist, Stage Director, Visionary, this unclassable artist is mixing with grace the technology, the drama, poetry, the absurdity, and with nothing, says all to us.
'Peyre is perhaps best known outside of France due to the prominent appearance of his mechanical devices in the films 'Delicatessan', 'City of Lost Children', 'Alien: Resurrection', 'Amelie', and 'Micmacs' by the director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. French art critic Gilbert Lascault says: "The cosmos of Gilbert Peyre is at the same time a museum of Arts and Métiers, an engine room, a funfair, a music hall, an opera, a spectacle of conjurer or magician, a phantasmagoria, a ceremony, a liturgy, a cavalcade, a procession, a zoo, a circus, an orgy, a mechanical comedy, a comical apocalypse".'-- Le Petit Festival du Theatre
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Gilbert Peyre's studio
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Selected works
'Mangemange' (2008)
'Haltérophile' (1987 - 1990)
'Ballerines' (2009)
'le distributeur d'idées' (2009)
'Rap Danse' (1998)
'l'ourson irrévérencieux' (2009)
from 'Issue de secours' (2008)
from 'Cupidon, Propriétaire de l'immeuble situé sur l'Enfer et le Paradis' (2009)
Portrait of Gilbert Peyre (in French; 2009)
*
p.s. Hey. I don't think Gilbert Peyre's work is known at all outside of France, and that's a total shame for reasons that I hope you will gather today. Is everybody still in one piece?