Set Designer
Ernest Pignon-Ernest was born in Nice in 1942. Since 1966, he has made the street both the setting and subject for his ephemeral works of art, which echo the historical and current events occurring there. Many of his artistic experiences were therefore preceded by a search for an outdoor space.
«Places are my essential materials, I try to understand them, to grasp both everything that can be seen there like the space, light and colours and everything that can no longer be seen such as history and buried memories. From that, I develop my images, which are then borne of the places in which I am going to set them (...). This insertion aims at both making the place a ‘visual space’ and working on its memories, revealing them, stirring them up and intensifying the symbolic (...). I do not produce works in a situation; I try to produce situations with works.» With several works in cities, parcours Rimbaud in Naples, Durban and Soweto (South Africa), parcours Mahmoud Darwich in Charleville-Paris, Alger, Lyon, Ramallah, Jerusalem etc., he exhibits his creative approach in museums and galleries: preliminary sketches and photos (Museum of Modern Art, Paris, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nice, Neue Pinakothek Munich, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, Lelong Gallery, Paris, Bartschi Gallery, Geneva, etc.). Ernest Pignon-Ernest regularly works with Jean- Christophe Maillot and the Ballets de Monte-Carlo. In 1995, he designed a stage curtain for the Monte-Carlo Opera to commemorate the company’s 10th anniversary. For Jean- Christophe Maillot, he designed the staging for Romeo and Juliet in 1996, Cinderella in 1999, La Belle in 2001 and was involved in Miniatures in April 2004, he also designed Le Songe in 2005, Daphnis et Chloe in 2009, LAC in 2011 and La Mégère apprivoisée in 2014. For his latest work, Parcours Jean Genet and Pasolini «Se torno» in Brest, he developed his characters with the assistance of some of the dancers from the Ballets de Monte-Carlo and Gaëtan Morlotti. He has also produced a work inspired by the texts of great Christian mystics in association with the principal dancer, Bernice Coppieters. In 2009, this work gave rise to exhibitions in Avignon and Monaco and a publication with Editions Gallimard.