Lucie Coudurier is a multidisciplinary art director based in Paris. Trained interior designer, scenographer, and artistic director, Lucie has developed her expertise in working under the name of Cité studio for 8 years with directors, brands, artists, and overall creatives including Gucci, Lancôme, Jacquemus, Orelsan, Philippe Katerine, and Clara Luciani among others.
In 2021, out of step with the world of the ephemeral that has become antinomic with the environmental issues of our time, she created OTTO RECYCLE and developed a strong taste for progressive initiatives combined with creative gestures. Otto is born from the search for slowness, meaning, connection, and autonomy. Born a positive initiative: recycling waste from the industrial world into unique and non-standard objects. Otto is above all a practice of low tech, of doing it yourself, which goes against the technical performance and economic profitability.
With this project, in August 2022, she experimented her process by developing monumental sculptures inspired by his fascination with Anatolian idols. She decided to immortalize and stage them captured through photos as well as a 4-minute film.
With her upcoming installation, Lucie Coudurier confronts the notion of femininity and the interpretations around this object of worship, at the border of cliché and fiction. She has thus created monumental Idols, on the scale of menhirs and blocks, frequently used to evoke masculinity. She does not confront genres, she merges them.
Are these signs and representations, rather than consciously artistic, above all rituals mystical or simply “utilitarian”? No one knows.
This notion of gaze, at the heart of the installation, alludes to the dystopian work 1984 and these Big brothers watching us. We are on the threshold of a global shipwreck, affecting all strata of our civilization and trivializing surveillance. While social networks and new technologies suggest that we are free, they make us “like” our slave condition.
The artist also refers to the community life that is now seen as new (against) constructive culture, opposing the flashy reflections & bitter mirages of our current capitalist world. A system rooted in the depths of our societies, interested in short-term profits while crowding out the innovators trying to preserve our world at a loss (and at a loss). From this design method turned towards intuition, she drew a creative process leading to protean works, in dialogue with past references, present subjects, and future predictions.
Installation
February 23 to 26 at the Galerie Ideal in the 10th arrondissement of Paris
