Of French and Russian descent, Pierre grew up in New York City, where his family had strong ties to the art world. From age four, he was enrolled in children’s workshops at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to which he still affectionately refers as “my favorite therapist.”
One of his fondest memories is of his mother taking him at age eight to an event honoring Jean-Michel Basquiat in a Soho loft. The artist and his vibrant works, along with the eclectic/electric party scene, made a lasting impression on Pierre, who still feels a particularly strong connection to New York’s eighties and nineties culture.
This early exposure encouraged Pierre to adopt a multi-disciplinary and multi-media approach in his own practice, which draws on art, fashion, music, poetry and explores the duality of French-American life and thought.
Pierre attended the French Lycée of New York, which was to prove significant to his life and art in different ways. The school’s international student body, in which many races and creeds were represented, became a source of several life-long friendships and fueled Pierre’s desire to be of the world in a meaningful way.
As for the Lycée’s emphasis at the time on strictness and conformity, it prompted him to seek refuge in his art as a space where he could be candid and at times subversive (one of his encrypted drawings, which was featured on the cover of the school newspaper, ultimately led to his brief expulsion from the school).
The Lycée also provided a meeting ground for his younger brother, Nikolai, and Julian Casablancas, who developed a close friendship and later formed the internationally famous band, the Strokes. From 1998 to 2008, Pierre spent much of his time globetrotting with The Strokes, and through this became part of a highly nurturing creative community while accumulating an impressive body of work. The bonds he formed during this period, as well his experiences during these travels, have had an enduring impact on his aesthetic sensibility and choice of subject matter.
In 2019, he exhibited alongside many notably NYC artists in “Meet Me in The Bathroom,” a show curated by Lizzy Goodman and Hala Matar at The Hole Gallery in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Later that year, he was also included in the “MyengDong International Art Fair” in Seoul, Korea. Pierre has also performed and showed work at Miami’s Art Basel and was preparing his first solo show in Tribeca before the pandemic struck.
As a result of managing the creative limitations imposed by the lockdown, Pierre and his brother began making films, notably “Lakes of Fire”, “What a Time to be Alive” and the upcoming “La Machine Infernale”. The brothers have toured internationally through their non-profit Live Performance Group Arts Elektra. Among the events Pierre and Nikolai have engaged in in this capacity is the happening calling for climate action that took place at New York’s Elizabeth Street Garden in the Fall of 2021, during which the brothers presented “Cultivez Votre Jardin” alongside Patti Smith and other distinguished performers.
Today, Pierre divides his time between his studios at the West Chelsea Arts Building in Chelsea, Manhattan, and in Connecticut, formerly the site of a summer camp for French children ran by his parents (and the place they first met). It is home to 35,000 books which Pierre is happily making his way through. He is currently working on several international projects in which art, music and fashion intersect in different ways.