Pierre Delavie describes himself as « a savage, in the etymological sense of the word, that is to say a man who lives in the forests ». This need for open space and commitment to the preservation of all living beings – as a thirty-year vegetarian, he would not hurt a fly ! – have definitely influenced his art.
In 1990, this inspired traveller went up to the silent shores of Greenland with a team of thirty adventurers to sculpt a monumental whale out of the ice of an iceberg. His alarm calls for climate and biodiversity actions are addressed to mankind through more recent works such as Le Radeau de Lampeduse. The boat ran aground under the windows of the Paris City Hall to help BAAM (Migrants Welcoming and Support Office) through one of his « détrompe-l'oeils », also qualified as « urban lies » by Les InRocks on their front page dedicated to the artist for his participation in Lille 3000. What kind of lies ? The softening of a Haussmannian building on Avenue George V in Paris, the apparition of the world's greatest anamorphosis on the chapel of the Palace of Versailles, the Détournement de canebière – which became the symbol of Marseille as the European Capital of Culture in 2013, and a Rapt architectural on the facade of the Grand Palais with Neo, a « deconstruction » work which he explains with a little smile : « the world as we see it may be nothing more than a hypothesis. Disturbing it opens an experimental field for creation and enables us to break away from our usual perceptual routines.»
Pierre Delavie prefers to use public places as playgrounds rather than display his works inside museums. With Colchide or Les Encombrants – a series of images and sculptures taking over the streets of Paris and other cities – nobody knows when, why, or how they appear. However, they always bear the same disrupting energy. During La Nuit Blanche 2016, the artist took over the Conciergerie with a mo
