Pascal Lièvre

Since the early years of the 21st century, Pascal Lièvre has brought together seemingly contradictory cultural registers through his paintings, photographs, videos and installations. Based on hybridization and appropriation, Pascal Lièvre’s propositions are visual as well as political. Art History is questioned through the reactivation of iconic figures of popular or high culture : As early as 2004, he revisited historic performances by female artists such as Orlan, Gina Payne or Marina Abramovic. His videos have been screened in festivals galleries and art fairs across France, Europe, Asia and North America. In 2007, his videos were shown in Muu Studio, Finland, during the « French Artists » exhibition.

Pascal Lièvre’s work has a political dimension that cannot be reduced to a form of aesthetic activism nor to the exploitation of other works of art. His unrelenting questioning of the mechanisms of the dominant culture aims at generating the possibility of an emancipation through art.

Deconstructing «social spectacle» , even if it means regarding it as a comedy, is an operation of parodic duplication of our common visual patrimony. Parody, in its strongest sense, uses the critical potentialities of imitation. This pos- ture directly refers to the theatrical origins of the «jester interludes» : it produces political parabases, and creates visual fictions by inverting models.
Using parody also allows Pascal Lièvre to conciliate a critical approach of biopower and a reflection on the performativity of sexual identity.