Do you feel lonely in an empty museum?
I do not. There is a kind of emptiness in such a monumental space, full of objects linking past and present, yet existing beyond everyday life. I quickly feel as though I am stepping into another world—yet one that is familiar, a home away from the noise of the now. It is also a journey through my own life, as my passion for archaeology, old walls, buildings, and all kinds of fragments has been the fil rouge since childhood. Over time, almost as an artistic practice and training, this has only grown stronger. I need only close my eyes to enter a kind of metaphysical collection.
I like to imagine that de Chirico, Sironi, Morandi, and de Pisis—mentors in spirit—had similar experiences. Fragments are far more compelling to imagine than what has survived time without damage. The Metaphysical Collections I will show in July reflect my curiosities—what I have spent my life observing, but also what I now see, hear, and feel when I close my eyes. These portraits I paint of well known interiors, mostly in Rome, carry this same metaphysical emptiness. I like to free the viewer to step in and experience my refuge, my place of calm.
Are these solitary interiors a reaction to an overcrowded world? Perhaps. But I believe every artistic endeavour offers a kind of solitude that we need in order to survive.
— Pierre Bergian
From Roman palazzi to the long galleries and stately rooms of Holkham Hall, Petworth House and Castle Howard, from artists’ studios and collectors’ houses to rooms visited in life and others encountered through painting, the works in the exhibition trace a landscape of remembered places: Bergian’s personal atlas where architecture, memory and imagination coexist.
Pierre Bergian (born 1965, Bruges, Belgium) studied Art History and Archaeology, which, together with his fascination for and knowledge of the history of architecture, inform his work. Recent solo exhibitions include An Ode to Rome, Antichita Alberto di Castro, Rome (2025) and De Gournay, Los Angeles (2025). In 2022 Bergian’s paintings of Hubert de Givenchy’s interiors (commissioned by the Givenchy family) were exhibited as part of the sale of Givenchy’s art collection at Christie’s Paris. His work is in several public collections including: The British Museum, London; Holburne Museum, Bath and Pallant House Gallery, Chichester.
