Pierre Joseph

First monograph

With his fellow artists Philippe Parreno, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, and Bernard Joisten, Pierre Joseph (b. 1965, lives and works in Paris) contributes to the redefinition of the aesthetic of art since the 1990s. He is the author of groundbreaking exhibitions and works—created on his own or in collaboration—such as the “Paradise Workshops,” 1990, the pop culture “Characters to be reactivated” series, 1991–1997, or the collaborative projects of the 2000s that made him a seminal figure for the new generation of French artists. His approach successively deals with issues such as the permanence of things and the digital manipulation of reality, questions of knowledge and transmission, of how to produce forms, and how they evolve.

Introduced by a retrospective essay by French art critic and curator Stéphanie Moisdon, this book is a selective overview of the artist’s production, accompanied by a conversation with British artist Liam Gillick, and a focus on the “Characters to be reactivated” series by French art critic and theoretician Nicolas Bourriaud. In his essay the latter states that, “with the help of installations that affect the exhibition site, Joseph offers us experimental objects, active products, and artworks that suggest new ways of apprehending the real and new types of investment in the art world.”