Their repertoire is full of recurring characters, like a family, and a fabulous bestiary. Their style is characterized by impeccable graphics borrowing from comics and children's graffiti, incessant breaks in scale, and spaces wavering as if in a dream.
It balances between a hilarious and explosive iconoclasm on the one hand, in the manner of indomitable rascals and an overwhelming melancholy on the other.
Thomas Schlesser, Director of the Hartung—Bergman Foundation
10 years already...
Ella & Pitr's first exhibition at the gallery was in 2012. Ten years ago, the pair from Saint-Etiene shook up the Parisian neighbourhood of Saint-Honoré with Celui qui volait les étoiles pour les mettre dans sa soupe (The one who stole the stars to put them in his soup). The world they conjure up delights with its poetry its humour, its simulated candour, revelling in its freshness as much as it challenges. The naivety was always feigned, only form, while the substance could be rough.
In the decade since, Ella & Pitr have come a long way. They have travelled far and wide, crisscrossing the globe to paint and exhibit, from Beijing to Chicago, by way of Stavanger, London, Rome, Santiago de Chile, Mumbai, and countless other cities. They brought into the wolrd a family of giants that can only be viewed from the sky, they painted —twice— the biggest wall in Europe. Firsty in 2015 in Norway then in 2019 in Paris, before finally deciding to work on their destruction. In the end, they tired of the quest to go ever bigger. With size taking precedence over substance, scale over subject, they decided to get back to the fundamental of urban art, i.e its ephemeral aspect, by litteraly exploding their creations.
Because that's why Ella & Pitr are all about; not dwelling on the tried and tested. Ever on the move so as not to stagnate, not to get bored or boring, andn to position themselves where we do not expect them. That frame of mind applies to both their street art and their studio work. Over the past decade their work has undergone a series of transformations and evolutions. First of all, the medium, with paintings on canvas and paper of course, but also on concrete, wood, printer's drawers, with scenes hidden behind stained glass, drawn characters communicating with (or through) objects: brushes, pebbles, ceramics, broken crokery... all home-made and spun from the same poetic fibre that they themselves are made of. Ella & Pitr surprises again when three years ago they unveiled the first works in their series Plis et Replis de soi (Folds and folds of self). More abstract, that new body of work was not a break with their figurtive creations but rather an expansion on them. The piles of fabric highlighted the clothes, their textures and detailled patterns, with which they dressed their characters.
Ella & Pitr neither renounce nor sacrifice anything. Over those ten years we —as gallery owners but also as art collectors and enthusiasts— have been able to see what "freedom to create" means for artists whom no object, size or subjects is off limits. And today, with ever the same curiosity and gluttony for more, we welcome a new exhibition from the couple, Voyage en soi sauvage. Join us as we embark in this "Journey into the wild self..."
