Olivier Larivière lives and works in Paris. After a stint in the Beaux Arts, Paris (ENSBA) in 2000, he received a merit scholarship to study at the School of Visual New York (SVA) in 2004 and graduated from the Arts Décoratifs Paris (ENSAD) in 2005. He obtained various residencies, including the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2006 to GlogauAIR in Berlin in 2009 and the Casa de Velázquez (Member of the Institute of France in Madrid) in 2011-2012.
He has participated in many group shows in Europe, including the Biennale of Contemporary Art in Bourges in 2008, the Biennale de Cerveira, Portugal in 2009, the Kunstraum Kreuzberg in Berlin in 2009. He participated in 2010 to the XII International Artists Call in the Luis Adelantado Gallery in Valencia, Spain and received in 2011 the Gérard Fromanger award at the Antoine Marin Competition that rewards young rising figures of contemporary painting. He is represented at the present time by the Gallery Roberto Polo and his work is featured in several private collections.
Olivier Larivière is interested in his work in the relationship of man to time, how it structures him, models his identity and gives his identity to a story always to be rewritten.His work depicts the epiphanies and wanderings of fallen heroes, magnificent losers, ordinary marginal people, drawing the narrative thread from incongruous or absurd situations, to the point of breaking it. The no man’s land that they stealthily live in, always in transit and protected by the night, reflects the image of a floating world with an unstable content that you walk around with unsteady steps.Each painting develops a dialectic made up of contradictory notions: the event or its expectation, the known and the unknown, being and appearing, desire and despair, free will and fate, dream and character down to earth of life.
