Rainbow Portraits

Photographer, draughtsman and performer, Laurent Poleo-Garnier graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2020. Sensitive and close to their models, his portraits of Parisian and Berlin youth, or of dancer and choreographer François Chaignaud, tell the story of a fluid era and express the artist's taste for metamorphoses, costumes, the world of show business, drag culture and its representatives, illustrious or anonymous. Laurent Poleo-Garnier also depicts himself in self-portraits inspired by figures from his personal pantheon (Nijinsky, Yves Saint Laurent, etc.), sometimes enhanced in ink or pencil with rainbow colors. These founding, free and transgressive figures are also reproduced in his works on canvas and paper. Far from the selfie and close to the homage, the images of Poleo-Garnier, a transformist artist heir to the pioneers Barbette, Claude Cahun and Manon, blend eras, genres and mediums, building aesthetic and sensitive bridges between the 20th and 21st centuries, between the visual arts and the performing arts.