The exhibition brings together two key bodies of work by Stéphane Couturier and comprises 13 photographic works, several of them large-scale, as well as an oversized tapestry work.
At its centre is the series E1027+123, produced between 2021 and 2024 at Eileen Gray’s Villa E-1027 on the Côte d’Azur. Couturier approaches architecture not as a static object, but as a dynamic pictorial space shaped by historical, spatial and material layers. Within the villa, Eileen Gray’s radical modernist spatial concepts intersect with Le Corbusier’s later and long-contested interventions, forming a complex network of perspectives, colours and structures. These layers constitute the conceptual foundation of Couturier’s photographic practice.
Central to his working method is a rigorously developed approach to image composition based on digital layering, fragmentation and deliberate displacement. Couturier combines two photographic views of the same site into a newly constructed pictorial reality, in which perspectives, surfaces and chromatic fields permeate one another. The resulting images are dense, multi-layered compositions that oscillate between photographic precision and painterly abstraction. Architecture is not documented but analytically deconstructed and recomposed.
The series E1027+123 was presented in monumental scale at the Rencontres d’Arles from July to October 2025. The oversized tapestry work shown in this exhibition translates Couturier’s photographic language into a textile medium, rendering the complexity of his compositions physically tangible. It also pays homage to the extensive exploration of weaving and textiles undertaken by both Eileen Gray and Le Corbusier throughout their careers.
Since 2020, Couturier has expanded his research to combine the photographic medium with textiles, creating contemporary tapestries. In 2024, he was selected as the winner of an open call to produce two tapestries for the 800th anniversary of Beauvais Cathedral, a project led by the Mobilier National.
The exhibition is complemented by new works dedicated to the Le Corbusier Pavilion in Zurich, created exclusively for this presentation. Here, Couturier again focuses on structural logic, materiality and rhythmic tension rather than architectural iconography. Through his method of layering and condensation, the pavilion is transformed into abstract pictorial spaces that resist singular spatial readings and instead generate an intensified visual experience.
Stéphane Couturier (born 1957, Neuilly-sur-Seine) is widely regarded as one of the leading contemporary photographers working at the intersection of architecture and image construction. Since the early 1990s, he has developed a consistently conceptual body of work in which photography functions as a constructive and analytical medium. His practice is characterised by a close interrelation between photographic observation and digital image composition, extending architectural photography into an autonomous pictorial language.
Couturier’s work has been exhibited internationally at major institutions including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Rencontres d’Arles. His works are held in numerous important public and private collections worldwide. He is a recipient of the Prix Niépce.
