Pierre Molinier
Angélique Aubrit & Ludovic Beillard
Sui Generis
Opening: 24.04.2026, 7 pm
Duration: 24.04.2025 – 12.07.2026
Curated by Nadia Ismail, Christophe Gaillard and Camille Gouget
Sui generis – forming a class by itself
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Pierre Molinier’s death, Kunsthalle Giessen dedicates an exhibition to the French artist that recontextualizes his provocative erotic photographs and photomontages, as well as their intense engagement with identity, self-staging, and the creation of an ideal self. Featuring photographs, collages, archival material, personal objects, and furniture from his residential studio, the exhibition offers a comprehensive insight into Molinier’s life and work.
Entering into a contemporary dialogue with Molinier’s work are Angélique Aubrit and Ludovic Beillard, who have been working together as an artist duo since 2021. Their practice combines sculpture, installation, video, performance, and drawing to create immersive environments populated by grotesque figures. In these burlesque, often absurd scenarios, theatre, sculpture, and film merge into dense narrative spaces. Self-sewn costumes, wooden sculptures, and recycled furniture form the material basis of their works. Aubrit and Beillard develop hybrid characters inspired by commedia dell’arte, grotesque cinema, and philosophical concepts. These figures reflect social marginality, psychological states, and collective uncertainty.
The often uncanny, wooden-headed figures created by Aubrit and Beillard resonate with Molinier’s obsessive visual world and his idea of the body as a malleable, transformable material. Both positions are united by the impulse to conceive new, hybrid beings beyond stable identities—as an attempt to imagine another species, another self. Since 2024, Aubrit and Beillard have been focusing on the film project une solitude vraiment terrible, in which they imagine the collapse of the capitalist system. In Sui Generis, they present a new chapter of the film in echo with the life and work of Pierre Molinier.
Pierre Molinier (1900, Agen – 1976, Bordeaux, France) was a French painter, photographer, and performer, best known for his radically transgressive work associated with Surrealism. Trained as a decorative and house painter, Molinier initially worked in Bordeaux as a painter of figurative landscapes and portraits before increasingly abandoning traditional visual languages from the 1940s onward. After the Second World War, he turned to esoteric and later explicitly erotic and performative practices. His work revolves around themes such as androgyny, fetishism, self-staging, desire, death, and the dissolution of stable identities. From the 1950s onward, Molinier developed a distinctive visual language combining painting, photography, and photomontage, frequently using himself as a model and deliberately subverting gender roles. In 1955, André Breton took notice of his work and integrated Molinier into the circle of Surrealism. Despite—or precisely because of—numerous scandals, his work remained largely overlooked for a long time. He lived and worked in Bordeaux until his suicide in 1976.
Angélique Aubrit (*1988, Angoulême) lives and works in Brussels. Ludovic Beillard (*1982, Bordeaux) lives and works in Bordeaux. Both initially studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, followed by the École de Recherche Graphique in Brussels. Since 2021, they have been working together as an artist duo. Their works have been shown in numerous solo exhibitions, including at Galerie Valeria Cetraro, Paris (2025), Kunstverein Bielefeld (2023), La Centrale, Brussels (2023), Centre d’art La Tôlerie, Clermont-Ferrand (2021), CAC – Centre d’art La Synagogue, Delme (2021), Établissement d’en face, Brussels (2021), and Komplot, Brussels (2019). They have also participated in numerous international group exhibitions, including at Casino Luxembourg (2025), Steirischer Herbst (2025), Haus Mödrath, Kerpen (2024), Clages Gallery, Cologne (2023), K21 Düsseldorf (2023), Centre Pompidou-Metz (2022), CRAC – Le 19, Montbéliard (2022), CAPC Bordeaux (2021), and FUTURA, Prague (2020). In 2022, the artist duo received the Prix Médiatine in Brussels. Recent residencies include Triangle – Astérides, Marseille (2023), Centre d’art Les Capucins, Embrun (2022/23), and Centre Pompidou-Metz (2022). Since 2023, their works have been part of the collection of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP), Paris. They are represented by Galerie Valeria Cetraro, Paris, and Wouters, Brussels.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Pierre Molinier’s death, Kunsthalle Giessen dedicates an exhibition to the French artist that recontextualizes his provocative erotic photographs and photomontages, as well as their intense engagement with identity, self-staging, and the creation of an ideal self. Featuring photographs, collages, archival material, personal objects, and furniture from his residential studio, the exhibition offers a comprehensive insight into Molinier’s life and work.
Entering into a contemporary dialogue with Molinier’s work are Angélique Aubrit and Ludovic Beillard, who have been working together as an artist duo since 2021. Their practice combines sculpture, installation, video, performance, and drawing to create immersive environments populated by grotesque figures. In these burlesque, often absurd scenarios, theatre, sculpture, and film merge into dense narrative spaces. Self-sewn costumes, wooden sculptures, and recycled furniture form the material basis of their works. Aubrit and Beillard develop hybrid characters inspired by commedia dell’arte, grotesque cinema, and philosophical concepts. These figures reflect social marginality, psychological states, and collective uncertainty.
The often uncanny, wooden-headed figures created by Aubrit and Beillard resonate with Molinier’s obsessive visual world and his idea of the body as a malleable, transformable material. Both positions are united by the impulse to conceive new, hybrid beings beyond stable identities—as an attempt to imagine another species, another self. Since 2024, Aubrit and Beillard have been focusing on the film project une solitude vraiment terrible, in which they imagine the collapse of the capitalist system. In Sui Generis, they present a new chapter of the film in echo with the life and work of Pierre Molinier.
Pierre Molinier (1900, Agen – 1976, Bordeaux, France) was a French painter, photographer, and performer, best known for his radically transgressive work associated with Surrealism. Trained as a decorative and house painter, Molinier initially worked in Bordeaux as a painter of figurative landscapes and portraits before increasingly abandoning traditional visual languages from the 1940s onward. After the Second World War, he turned to esoteric and later explicitly erotic and performative practices. His work revolves around themes such as androgyny, fetishism, self-staging, desire, death, and the dissolution of stable identities. From the 1950s onward, Molinier developed a distinctive visual language combining painting, photography, and photomontage, frequently using himself as a model and deliberately subverting gender roles. In 1955, André Breton took notice of his work and integrated Molinier into the circle of Surrealism. Despite—or precisely because of—numerous scandals, his work remained largely overlooked for a long time. He lived and worked in Bordeaux until his suicide in 1976.
Angélique Aubrit (*1988, Angoulême) lives and works in Brussels. Ludovic Beillard (*1982, Bordeaux) lives and works in Bordeaux. Both initially studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, followed by the École de Recherche Graphique in Brussels. Since 2021, they have been working together as an artist duo. Their works have been shown in numerous solo exhibitions, including at Galerie Valeria Cetraro, Paris (2025), Kunstverein Bielefeld (2023), La Centrale, Brussels (2023), Centre d’art La Tôlerie, Clermont-Ferrand (2021), CAC – Centre d’art La Synagogue, Delme (2021), Établissement d’en face, Brussels (2021), and Komplot, Brussels (2019). They have also participated in numerous international group exhibitions, including at Casino Luxembourg (2025), Steirischer Herbst (2025), Haus Mödrath, Kerpen (2024), Clages Gallery, Cologne (2023), K21 Düsseldorf (2023), Centre Pompidou-Metz (2022), CRAC – Le 19, Montbéliard (2022), CAPC Bordeaux (2021), and FUTURA, Prague (2020). In 2022, the artist duo received the Prix Médiatine in Brussels. Recent residencies include Triangle – Astérides, Marseille (2023), Centre d’art Les Capucins, Embrun (2022/23), and Centre Pompidou-Metz (2022). Since 2023, their works have been part of the collection of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP), Paris. They are represented by Galerie Valeria Cetraro, Paris, and Wouters, Brussels.