2. Artists & stock
3. Pierre-Yves Le Duc
4. Biography

Notes of biography

Pierre-Yves Le Duc was born in France in 1964. His Italian origin led him to attend Italian courses at the Arts Faculty of the Sorbonne, where he graduated in 1988. Already fascinated by the city of Naples during his previous journeys there, he decided that this was to be the place where he wished to establish himself. This he did that same year, after receiving a grant from the university.
He spent the first period dealing with a number of realities – different places of life and different people, traces and shadows of century-old remnants and presences – and discovering the wealth of Naples. Although he was a frequent presence in its artistic milieu, he never lost touch with other important cultural centers.
His first works date back to 1989 but it was only in 1992, after meeting the eighty-five-year-old Alfredo Bovio di Giovanni, that he made his decision to devote himself entirely to art. Great was the friendship that bound the two until 1995, when Alfredo passed away. However, what this major encounter left Pierre-Yves with was the profound sense of one’s own individuality, which can be acquired through the artistic search. The transition between 1994  and 1995 was marked by a rift in which it was work that structured space and stimulated a dynamic dialogue. The site he chooses for his complex installations can not be dissociated from the work that takes shape in it; the distance between the space and the work is reduced to an inevitable and indispensable meeting point.
May 1994 saw his first contact with the public. He chose Piazza San Domenico Maggiore as the site for his cenacolo, thirteen canvases that depicted as many giant vaginas (70.87 inches x 70.87 inches) and were arranged in circle around the phallic totem of the baroque obelisk. He continued his search in May 1995 with works depicting the huge anatomic details of penetration (18 canvases measuring 74.02 inches x 152.76 inches), creating a perfect ambivalence between the pictorial mark and a volcanic eruption. The nine muses and nine poets, which he had planned to have displayed in the monumental semicircle of Piazza Plebiscito, was to meet with a stern political censorship. In December 1996 he went down the depths of the Graeco-Roman aqueduct to install a work titled i quaranta ladroni. 41 monoliths arranged in the shape of a labyrinth symbolized as many vaginas and at the same time the synthesis of the female body depicted as the expression of vanity caught in the grip of death represented by the filigree of a skeleton. In December 1998 medium enabled him to launch himself into a type of installation featured by the perfect fusion and the genius of work in space. This, which was the most complex and complete of his works, was set in the Sala of Lazzaretto in Naples. In February 2004 he created gu, a monumental light box which was installed in the Sala della Meridiana of the National Archeological Museum of Naples.
Since then, together with other creations (the osso buco video-installation; the Rosarno, desperate houselives sculpture, and the bonificarsi, please! installation), he has been working on two more projects, titled respectively spray and débordements (overflowings). Motion painting was a monumental video-installation, while cosmic whore was conceived for a post-industrial space. In January 2008 he presented the Soap Opera exhibition and the Motion painting project in the galleria41artecontemporanea in Turin. He then moved to Naples in 2009, where he exhibited the entire cycle of frames composing Soap Opera. Lastly, he held an exhibition titled erotoritratti (sex portraits) first in the Royal Palace of Portici and then, in 2011, in the Kaplan’s project gallery. March 30, 2012 will mark the opening day of a personal exhibit titled Sacred Portal. Centered upon the theme of  autoeroticism, this show will be held at the Bill Lowe Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia (USA).

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