AGATHE PITIÉ


 

Born in Castres, France, in 1986.
Lives and works between Castres and Paris.

"I'm exploring gold myths of illuminati masters of Middle Ages using a method of representation 
- Horror vacui - to create a cosmogony where ancient characters and myths coexist in a close dialogue with images of contemporary icons of pop culture."

Pitié creates her own unique figurative compositions where lions, deer, goats, snails, dragons and Ninja Turtles live together with criminals, soldiers, street gangs, kings and queens while also crafting her own personal alchemy where a crying sun, an astonished moon or a fire, float above scenes in conflict. 

“In this moment, I have seen millions of delightful or terrible actions; none has astonished me as much as the fact that they all took the same point without any overlapping and without any transparency. What my eyes saw was simultaneous…”     - Jorge Luis Borges, El Aleph, 1949.

"I design each drawing as if I was doing a casting guided by a screenplay carefully written in my notebooks with actors and roles. Once I have decided on the subject of my drawing, I fill the pages with my ideas. And just as a director, I summon the characters I have met in the course of my research on that imaginary casting that will take part on my next production. They are organized and laid on paper in a disarray that is only apparent.  The scene is orchestrated, and each character plays the role assigned to them.  As in a film, extras appear alongside the stars and come to life in their own sequence”. 

The action also takes place off-screen and off-time.  It is precisely this break or pause induced by the very practice of drawing (non-animated) which allows the viewer to unravel the story. The eye gradually becomes accustomed to the density and richness of the extremely detailed storyboards under observation. Thus, begins an endless hunt for “familiar faces”, the first clues towards unraveling the story.  Pitié is constantly trying to add an anthropological side to her world, which is full of satirical poetry. 

The international and eternal dimension of her compositions and art pieces are also a big example of popular advertising culture. The cultural mix imagined by Agathe Pitié, a genuine syncretism, creates a new ensemble that radically transforms the classical version of each narrative depicted. She surfs the internet, and also the Deep Web and Dark Web, jumping from link to link so as to forge an original path extracted from the mass of information explored. 

The constant availability of information and the rapidity of its dissemination have profoundly changed the structure and the functionality of modern society, as well as the social development of individuals. A simple search on the Web provides access to an infinite amount of information which the artist must then select and arrange.  

Agathe Pitié’s range of references is very extensive and everyone is free to consider them in light of their own personal knowledge and/or experience. The viewer navigates the drawings as anyone would the internet, randomly jumping from one visual reference to the next, gradually weaving the links that tie these disparate, seemingly unrelated elements, together.

Drawing requires few resources, it is a medium that allows the immediate reproduction of information. Considered to be the first art form on Earth, its existence, as evidenced in cave paintings, dates back to prehistoric times. The Internet, on the other hand, thus being a modern invention, provides instant access to information. In Agathe Pitie’s work, this technological tool merges with the most primitive art form. And it is precisely in the 1990´s, at the time of the creation and democratization of the Web, that drawing, hitherto neglected by art history, came into its own right, thereby becoming an autonomous genre of creation.  

Without going so far as to conclude that these two phenomena are causally related, it is interesting to note the temporal concordance between the development of the internet and the renewal of drawing. These technological and artistic upheavals occurred over thirty years ago, at the time of the artist´s birth. Hers is a generation that works, communicates and entertains itself via the internet, altering its relationship to others in space and time.  

The screen becomes a way of communication with the outside world, from the solitude of a bedroom, office or studio. This solitary face-to-face is reproduced in a ricochet effect between the artist and her drawings. 

The simplicity of the medium makes it the most appropriate form of expression.