Chaumont-sur-Loire (Loir-et-Cher). It is a sculpture by Nicolas Alquin who welcomes this year the visitor of the art season. Atypical, she is in pink marble of Verona while it most often works wood and bronze. Entitled the Arunachala’s dreamit consists of two blocks, one evoking a sleeper, the other a mountain in reference to the dream of an Indian sage, Ramana Maharshi. For this Socrates refugee in his mountain in Arunachala and who answered questions from his visitors, the only reality that everyone could feel was in sleep or deep meditation.
A whole program that sets the tone, and even the tones, of this 18th edition of the art season: the allegory of the legend, the tale (in the wake of the Garden Festival: “Once upon a time in the garden”, which is held at the same time), and the idea of subtlety. But also the desire, like every year, of “Highlight young or other older artists who are not in the mainstream”, And on which Chantal Colleu-Dumond, the director of the domain and the exhibition commissioner, a ” Want to give a spotlight “. Alquin actually ticks all the boxes. Stéphane Erouane Dumas too, who, in the Lierres clearing, installed Soul soulsa bronze sculpture which despite its 930 kg and 2 meters in height transforms the rock wall of a lace cliff to bring out two figures.
Daniel Firman, for his part, remembered that the Princess of Broglie (1857-1943), the last private owner of the premises, was offered in 1898 by the Maharaja of Kapurthala a young elephant by the name of Miss Pundgi (India again). Under the awning of the stables, the artist thus presents an elephant in plastic and in 3D printing which he put ass above head to set him up on his trunk and reminds that an elephant deceives! This year, he is one of the most recognized artists – one of the categories of each edition of the art season – alongside Miguel Chevalier. The latter offers a virtual plant ballet in the digital gallery of the castle, generated by artificial intelligence and projected on four screens like the four seasons. In this renowned artists’ register also appear Anne and Patrick Poirier, who hung in the Diane tower a luster upside down with bulbs and knives! Likewise Fabienne Verdier, who has the honors of the nine large rooms of the high galleries of the castle. She deploys her lines, her gesture, her breath (air, water) with in particular a set of four triptychs on canvas, designed for the place, which cover all the walls of a room as if to enclose it.
Weightless architectures
Among the younger artists, but already benefiting from a beautiful recognition, Claire Trotignon makes here a magnificent demonstration of the delicacy with which she composes her works, using small fragments that she cuts in engravings or in her own drawings before putting them together to evoke architectures in weightlessness. Here it reveals an immense and fascinating work 13 m long specially carried out for the occasion.
This great finesse is found in the works of Olivier Leroi who, in the bass gallery of the West wing, hung around fifty drawings, each made from a pen of a pheasant, the starting point of a sort of exquisite corpse full of humor and poetry. Elsewhere, in the trees of the park, the same installed mirrors whose cutouts make it possible to catch clouds or reflect other trees. Thousands of peacock feathers also make up a very surprising painting by Carole Solvay in the gallery of the stables. Because in Chaumont, the subtlety is also born from the rapprochements and bridges created between the works of the 14 artists of this edition (among which is a couple, G & K, Katarzyna Kot and Stéphane Guiran) as well as their installation at their “Just place”according to the Mantra of Chantal Colleu-Dumond for almost twenty years.
