Car Crash IV, 2024

Jean-Michel Poirot  

Jean-Michel Poirot fell into the pot of art at a very young age, as if creation had always been part of his destiny.

Born on April 11, 1968 in Perpignan, this artist from the Aude stands out today as a unique and passionate figure between pop surrealism and narrative figuration, a painting where the real and the imaginary meet and intertwine to better question our perception of the world.

From his earliest works, Poirot freed himself from the shackles of an overly Cartesian pragmatism, choosing to free painting from its usual constraints to allow the unexpected irruption of the fantastic to emerge, at the very heart of the rawest reality.

For Jean-Michel Poirot, creation obeys the law of series, a true common thread that organizes and deepens his artistic exploration.

Overall, Jean-Michel Poirot's work presents itself as a true reflection on the way we view differences. "Who decides where the norm lies?" he asks.

“Are monsters really where we think they are?

Is it not ultimately our gaze that is monstrous? These powerful and disturbing questions run through his entire artistic production, inviting the viewer to question their certainties, to deconstruct their prejudices, and to adopt a more open and critical view of the world. Through his art, Poirot pushes us to question the boundaries between the normal and the abnormal, the beautiful and the ugly, the real and the imaginary, revealing how these notions are often shifting and arbitrary social constructions.

For him, painting cannot be content with being a simple decorative object or visual entertainment. "I consider painting to be one of the essential supports of commitment," he states with conviction. It is a space of freedom, a place of protest where a singular, sometimes disturbing but always sincere, view of the world around us is expressed. Through his works, Jean-Michel Poirot asserts the political and social dimension of art, its power to question and transform.

Based in Ferrals-les-Corbières, he now divides his time between his work as a freelance graphic designer, his passionate practice of the guitar in various musical groups, and the ever-present expression of his art. This plurality of activities nourishes his inspiration and enriches his creative universe, making him a complete artist, at once committed, sensitive, and deeply human. His work continues to surprise, question, and move, inviting everyone to an intimate encounter with the unexpected and the marvelous nestled at the heart of reality.

The law of series

In the series "Spitter Portraits," the artist adopts a dark and disturbing posture.

It features characters whose faces are completely masked, covered with black garbage bags, powerful symbols of anonymity, suffocation and the erasure of identity.

These disturbing, anonymous and universal figures could be your office colleagues, your neighbors, or even members of your own family. Through this disturbing staging, Poirot delivers a scathing critique of social conventions and the hypocrisy that often governs our daily interactions. These paintings reveal the hidden and latent violence that can animate human relationships, the fear of the other, the rejection of difference, and this tendency to conceal what is disturbing under polite appearances.

It is an invitation to look beyond the masks, to question what we hide behind appearances, and to recognize the common humanity that unites us.

The series "Scenes from Married Life" offers a journey to the confines of human emotions, in the complex and often contradictory labyrinths of love life.

With a lighter tone, but not without biting irony, this series draws on the visual codes of kitsch popular culture, borrowing from photo novels and amateur family iconography. It unfolds like a true "telenovela," where dramas, misunderstandings, and tensions intertwine in a choreography that is both familiar and offbeat. Through this staging, Poirot explores the fragilities, hopes, and disillusionments that punctuate marital relationships, while highlighting with humor and lucidity the flaws and contradictions of our intimate lives. It is a look at love that is both tender and critical, revealing its flaws as much as its beauty.

The "Car Crash" series is composed of canvases haunted by the ghostly presence of abandoned car wrecks, evoking a post-apocalyptic landscape where the absence of human beings accentuates solitude and desolation.

Each wreck, abandoned and frozen in time, becomes the silent witness of a world that is gradually fading away. This suspended temporality, that of "after," resonates like a poignant meditation on the impermanence of things, on the fragility of our existences in the face of the inexorable passage of time and the violence of certain events. By confronting the spectator with this shifted reality, Poirot invites a profound awareness: what remains when man has disappeared? What trace remains of our fleeting passage on this earth?

To find out more: https://art-conseil-invest.com/artiste/jean-michel-poirot/