Multidisciplinary artist, Laurent-David Garnier explores the cycles of deterioration and regeneration of matter and follows the different incarnations at both the human and societal molecular level. Combining everyday products and advanced technologies, his olfactory and filmic sculptural installations reflect the structures of sensory experience and reveal the environmental and political issues. His work is an invitation to reconsider the boundaries between the living and the non-living and their modes of communication and relationship.

During his residence in the glass workshop, he continues his research devoted to the coasts and the materiality of salt. In dialogue with the glass craftsmen, he creates landscapes composed of fused glass and salt, one of the major resources of the Atlantic coast. He also produces macro-scale “hoppers”, glass paste structures, representing the fleur de sel with its entangled pyramidal crystals as they can be observed under a microscope.

This project, “SAU”, linked to the crystallization of sea salt, seeks to reveal the fragility of coastal ecosystems while showing the links between the aesthetics of the landscape and its environmental and socio-economic articulation.

At the same time, Laurent-David is working on a heritage project “LO” It consists in reproducing a perfume bottle from the original, found in 2010 in the Charente house of the writer Pierre Loti, today transformed into a museum. At the Foundation, the artist will concentrate exclusively on the bottle, having already recomposed the scent several years ago, thanks to the olfactory work he carried out from the residues found on this historic stale bottle.

Laurent-David’s interdisciplinary approach is expressed through films and sculptural, sensory and olfactory installations. “SAU” will be the subject of a double exhibition in La Rochelle from June 2 to September 3, 2023 (at the Tour de la Chaîne (CMN) and at the contemporary art space La Chapelle des Dames Blanches). “LO” will be presented as part of the centenary of Loti’s death, at the Académie Française, on May 10, 2023.

LAURENT DAVID-GARNIER

After a career as a senior perfumer in the perfume industry Garnier obtained an MFA at the Sandberg Institute Amsterdam in 2015. His work has been exhibited at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (FR), Musée du Quai Branly (Paris), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam ), Kunsthalle Bremerhaven De Appel Arts Center (Amsterdam), Kunstverein (Amsterdam). He was a laureate of the Mondes Nouveaux program (2021) The Institute for Art & Olfaction Los Angeles (2021), FRAC-MECA “Artists facing confinement” (2020) and Aide infdividuelle à la création DRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine (2013).