In the strange world of the living with Lydie Arickx

It is not an exhibition, it is a metamorphosis which invades the second floor around the double revolution staircase whose structure recalls that of DNA and constitutes the major symbol of this pictorial and sculptural research of the mechanism of the life.

The formats are gigantic, the half-windows have been half hidden by temporary picture rails (4.5 m × 3.5 m) to accommodate the monumental canvases.

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Menus Plaisirs de Chambord

Then, in three weeks, this art theater was set up.

It took cranes to hoist

The Earth (Planetum)

and its bubble of 400 kg of resin from the courtyard of the castle, or slide, to within 1 or 2 mm, the bas-relief on the root vanities through the wide doors. , the knees of the second skeleton jutting out by 40 cm (

The Evolution [Oscar]

bas-relief in bone and resin on emery cloth, named after all the flayed ones from the faculties of medicine).

Bosch table

The scale of the place is a challenge.

"I wanted to dress up the space, make like tapestries, create a graphic rhythm around the fireplaces, play with them like drafts"

, confides with a greedy air Lydie Arickx, 67 years old. In ten times two hours, perched on a scaffolding, she painted live, under the eye of the astonished public, ghosts and spirits which draw a vital flow on a gigantic replica of the

Spring

of Botticelli (6 × 4.7 m ).

“For forty years, I have been revolving around all aspects of creation and life. This is the Darwinian theme, life in its metamorphosis, its metaphysical dimension. Nothing has an end. I designed the exhibit before the pandemic. It is a touching coincidence to find yourself in this drama ”,

said this small format radiating energy.

His

Planetum,

where naked bodies are piled up as in a Bosch painting, is a sculpture that turns on a small motor.

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Its

Bronchial Tree

in bronze and resin gives precious material to the air in our lungs.

“Surreal, fantastic, not morbid, there is no inevitability, my gaze is shifted.

Here in Chambord, the fantastic is everywhere.

I like to make visible this physical enigma that we carry within ourselves, our breathing exists like a lace, a coral.

We carry this incredible complexity and we do not know it "

, explains Lydie Arickx, who was

" lost for fifteen years in the medical school, rue des Saints-Pères "

and claims

" the curiosity of Vinci and the spirit of the Renaissance ”

.

From giant to miniature

In the four arms of the cross, the high rooms rise to 7 meters. Apart from the picture rails posted between the windows, the modillions at the start of the vaults limit the hanging to 3.2 m. There are also two large closed spaces (6 m high) which each overlook three small cabinets (3 m). Between 150 and 200 works by Lydie Aricks line the premises, from the large fresco in oil and bitumen on canvas,

Les Origines

(4.1 x 9.7 m), to

La Fève

, a striking soft green sculpture on evolution from the seed to the child of the man that adults do not want to look at and that fascinates children.

From giant to miniature, to cabinet of curiosities, which brings together, in forty pieces, his graphic vocabulary.

It creates a kind of dizziness.

In the sumptuous chapel of Chambord, she created fourteen crosses for the fourteen stations of Christ, a

"path of materials, from ferrite to hemp, a path of conscience without martyrs",

from materials as unknown as the balls of rejection. owls and owls recovered from the zoo in Labenne, near Bayonne (she dissects them and recreates a tiny human skeleton from these animal remains).

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Nine projects to resuscitate Chambord, an earthly paradise

"Art is not harmless,"

recalls Lydie Arick, artist of Flemish origin (the family tree dates back to the time of Charles V), exhibited by fans of the atypical, Jean Clair and Antoine de Galbert, which Sarah Moon photographed superbly. The one who was close to the painter of Serbian origin Vladimir Velickovic, the terrible Topor and the brilliant Roman Cieslewicz feels

"closer to the primitive arts than to the expressionists"

. She deplores the loss of naturalness, the ability to be happy, the flavor of adventure and its enjoyment. And summarizes:

"Those who do not understand art do not understand the castle"

.

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