A Conversation with Pierre Legrand

A Conversation with Pierre Legrand.pdf

To say something about my work:

The first image which comes to my mind is that of Colombus in the middle of the Atlantic being asked about his journey. What could he say? His eyes rivetted on the empty horizon, the crew threatening to riot.

The last six months have seen so many changes in my work.

Changes very slow but so drastic that the feeling is that of SPEED, incredible speed. And I, drifting in the middle of the Atlantic …

At some point I came across a paragraph in Sri Aurobindo’s “Thoughts and Glimpses” which describes so well the process I went through over the years that I feel compelled to quote it:

The hand of the divine Artist works often as if it were unsure of its genius and its material. It seems to touch and test and leave, to pick up and throw away and pick up again, to labour and fail and botch and re-piece together. Surprises and disappointments are the order of his work before all things are ready. What was selected, is cast away into the abyss of reprobation; what was rejected, becomes the cornerstone of a mighty edifice But behind all this is the sure eye of a knowledge which surpasses our reason and the slow smile of an infinite ability.

The eyes on the horizon, having lost all hopes of a cool linear journey, I travelled with the winds. Hoping this time not to land in America (but to a further, deeper, encompassing new world…)

About the work:

Arp Foundation, Paris, 1995

All my life, from a very young age I had been tinkering, “making things” with my hands, as if I could not think without that.

As a student in Paris, I visited all the major galleries, the museums, art fairs, biennales, trying desperately to satisfy a longing for the new, the unknown – my technical studies as an engineer left me famished. In these spaces I experienced the impact of Matisse, Rothko, Calder, Miro, Brancusi….

That was real life: stand facing a Rothko as long as you can, do not look with your eyes but let it penetrate your body. Be one with it, a common energy field until you find yourself plunging deeper and deeper into silence, space, gratitude. You leave the room on tiptoes, aware of having touched physically, the sacred.

Later, eager to experience the words of The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, I could not help tinkering with whatever was available at hand.

I first tried to visualise some experiences in 3D and that ended in a series of sculptures in aluminium. The last of this series was executed in ferro-cement and stands in the Aureka workshop.

A major turn came with the book, Mind of the Cells and the frontier suddenly shifted. The problem was no more to imagine but to actually experience in the physical consciousness.

How to experience the cellular consciousness? How could Art help?

In the course of my research, I invented an alphabet which initially led to artist books in different materials and formats and also allowed me to structure my paintings, the sculptures, mobiles, anything. Suddenly, I had found a METHOD to go through the virgin forest.

Initially, I started to use my ‘alphabet’ to write poems of my own but very soon the texts became prayers to The Mother or, texts from Sri Aurobindo’s translation of the Vedas and the paintings became an integral process of yoga.

Then suddenly, I was offered the possibility to create an installation to mark the end of the 20th century and the start of a new one. This became Light Matter, a book of poems by Anu Majumdar, unfolding through space. A few geometric figures formed a coded alphabet to transcribe the poems, to build a temporary, spatial architecture in the Sri Aurobindo Auditorium.

Spectators became actors in this porous space, conscious of the multitudinous space of a single substance. Light Matter was an exploration of space and limit of the being, of its consciousness, a bridge between the inner and outer – a vibratory field energizing many levels – a playground for the soul discovering matter as many disguises of one Light.

Light Matter 1999 – Bharat Nivas

The aim became clear: by infusing the paintings and other multi-dimensional work with the power of prayers and other writings, they were becoming objects of power. Ideally, if one was receptive and could look at them long enough, one could become immortal… This, at least, was the hypothesis with which I embarked on a forty-years journey.

I cannot say yet if the hypothesis is right or wrong, for I have not found yet a spectator willing to stare long enough. The world is in a hurry.

In the course of years, I exhibited quite extensively, in Auroville, India and in Europe, occasionally being grouped together with the work of Mark Tobey or Richard Serra, an installation at UNESCO, Paris and so on.

Auroville, 2008

Harmony International Artists Residency 2008, Mumbai

Kochi Biennale Collateral, 2015

New Delhi, 2015

But after sometime it was clear the work had to be centred in Auroville, to be able to go deeper and to experiment more freely. This brought the next phase, of exploring work spatially, through installations and with architecture along with the paintings.

Studio, Auroville, 2022

All this went on for years, with hundreds of paintings, of all formats and on different supports, the experiment with Light and lightness through space, and the last of this period being the webs or, interconnected networks of colour, that The Mother had referred to in some of her cellular experiences.

Then came the first Auroville Literature Festival and we decided to give something symbolic to the participants. That took the sample form of a small interconnected web in colours.

They were individual pieces but seen together on a table or on a wall they looked like (with a little imagination) a group of individual cells, an interconnected community of a diverse and unified harmony. Not really knowing what they were as yet, I called them “little things.”

As they conveyed what I was looking for (a vague analogy of a colony of cells) better than any of my previous work — so much so, that I stopped painting altogether and concentrated on my new found “little things.”

Looking for a long time at a Rothko, I had definitely felt an expansion in the body. Could this expansion be pursued further by the right type of painting – could this lead to the mysterious cellular level?

This at least was my question and I tried to develop a painting that would encourage that experience But the “expansion” was always limited by the size of the artwork.

Centre d’Art, Auroville, 2016

And that is where came the magic of the “little things.” The white wall itself became the canvas and the “little thing” became only punctuations, which could be added at will, indefinitely.

Auroville, 2025

The little thing came from a long process of simplification and they are now no more than white dots on coloured discs of different sizes. It is so simple even a child can do it.

I experienced then, that which I had done a hundred times: the immediate discarding of my previous phase of work.

In this case I truly felt that for me painting was over. Finished. No more. I did not touch a brush for six months. At the most, a few little dots on coloured circles. But one cannot call that painting, it’s not serious.

Unity Pavilion, 2026

Then, unannounced, very subtle, unnoticed, came the urge to bring order in my workshop (usually the epitome of mess and chaos).

But slowly, things were moved, arranged, re-arranged, dismissed, discarded, thrown away. Then something emerged. Something alive, breathing. Something which had always been there.

The process took several weeks. It had nothing to do with the usual frantic and messy way of working. Everything was quiet, calm, silent and spacious. And, it was not anymore imposing my idea on something inert.

No, it was working with conscious, living entities; sometimes I even felt that they were calling me to be put in this or that place which was not according to beauty or aesthetics but it was always perfect.

Now I face my workshop with stacks of paintings corresponding to different periods I had previously discarded, eager to rush to the next one. But each period was intense, sincere, real. And now it was as if they were reclaiming their true place. They could not be rejected any more, they were alive.

It was as if all these were seeds that had been dormant and had suddenly sprouted all together.

It has been a long way. All these periods were stations of an inner journey, each one authentic because always it was the last one.

For many years there was a continuity in my work but suddenly the “little’ things appeared: sudden and incongruous like sudden flowers on a tree.

Because that is what they are, these “little things”: flowers, sparks of joy, explosions of colours … after the slow, patient, irresistible growth of the tree and the consent of the earth, the rain and the wind – with a little help of the sun.

What I had thought was an end was just a portion of a long parcours.

Studio, Auroville, 2026

I now work on installations which includes samples of the different phases of this research, no longer limited by a frame but free flying as the cosmos.

The result? It is no more a collection of individual pieces of different periods but a single space continuum.

It starts to reveal a new type of architecture aimed at moving from one state of consciousness to another.

Things seem at last to have a meaning. The exploration continues.