Pierre Bismuth

Pierre Bismuth has no preferred field but likes to use film extracts, works by other artists and found images. The only artist to have won an Oscar in Hollywood (shared with Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman for the screenplay of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, directed by Gondry, in 2005), Pierre Bismuth connects a large part of his work to cinema using various methods of subversion. 

This can be seen from the outset through the large wallpaper displayed on the outside wall of the exhibition, titled Following Marilyn Monroe’s right hand Some Like it Hot, a monumental enlargement of a drawing made by following the actress’ right hand on tracing paper placed over a screen showing the masterpiece by Billy Wilder. 

Inside the exhibition, a series of drawings/photograms develops this theme using the gestures of Marlene Dietrich, Louise Brooks and Catherine Deneuve among others. The artist also celebrates Sigmund Freud, in the only surviving short film of him, and Jacques Lacan, in an extract of a television interview, this time through moving images. Peter Sellers’ film The Party and Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book are used in sound and linguistic disorientation experiments that generate a sense of confusion, reflected in another wallpaper that progressively mixes the names of famous modern and contemporary artists. 

A new work in particular mark this exhibition: the Saab automobile that once belonged to a great collector of conceptual art, in which the upholstery has been entirely redone and now features the names of the artists included in said collection.