Downpours cascading over the Opera, a four-poster bed floating in a canal or a female watering a fountain: the Voyage à Nantes exhibits a multitude of contemporary works of art in the streets for two months. of the city of the Dukes. “ We forbade the themes because they are restrictive. In fact the theme is to interpret this city, ”explains Jean Blaise, the artistic director of the festival which starts on Saturday and lasts until September 27.
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To “ put art in the public space ”, each summer squares and buildings in Nantes and its region are invested by artists with often monumental constructions, part of which remains permanently after the event. The stroll will lead this year to the Place Graslin where the 18th century theater was covered with a waterfall by Stéphane Thidet, who had introduced six wolves into the moats of the castle of the Dukes of Brittany for the Estuaire festival, from which the Voyage arose. in Nantes, annual meeting since 2012.
“ There was the idea of keeping, like what we find behind the waterfalls, this legend that the treasures are behind the waterfalls, ” explained the artist who named the work Rideau , because he intends to play on the image of the theater curtain with these downpours falling with a great crash. The curtain " hides the building and at the same time makes it come alive ", he adds, specifying that the water used forms a loop to prevent any loss.
A little further on, the Fontaine sculpture was installed , created by Elsa Sahal in 2012, which evokes the Manneken-Pis of Brussels. This pink sandstone structure represents the lower part of a female body urinating while standing and " corresponded well to the space of the fountain of the Place Royale ", estimated Jean Blaise.
Fontaine, by Elsa Sahal, had been exhibited during the Fiac in the Tuileries garden in Paris. ELSA SAHAL, FONTAINE, 2012. COURSE OUTSIDE THE WALLS OF THE FIAC IN THE TUILERIES JARDIN, PARIS. PHOTO: DENIS AMON
The Voyage to Nantes, which usually attracts some 650,000 visitors, was postponed by one month by the coronavirus which will not hinder its progress since most of the works are outdoors like the large immaculate busts installed on the island of Nantes by Nathalie Talec. " I have an obsession for white in what it conjures up of blindness, of blindness ", explained the artist about In a Silent Way which represents two young girls wearing one a virtual reality mask and the other a headset. Nathalie Talec wanted to show " a somewhat generic figure, a little out of time, who is anything but cynical ".
" Do something unproductive "
In the same district recently emerged from the earth, the work Psellion de l'île is also brought to remain: it is about a metasequoia of 20 meters, which one can call “ fossil tree, because until 1941, we thought this tree had disappeared ”before it was found in China, explains artist Evor. Around the tree transported in an exceptional convoy from a Dutch nursery, Evor built a low wall to invite contemplation, suggesting that one can see in his work a “ mythological character ”.
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Some artists have also been offered the possibility of exhibiting in several places such as Martine Feipel and Jean Bechameil with their concrete and ceramic work, Les Brutalistes, which will be used as a bread oven, and their exhibition Automatic Revolution . The latter features objects animated by factory robots reprogrammed to " do something unproductive " and show " that instead of creating things for consumption, we can create dreams ", explained Martine Feipel .
A very colorful four-poster bed floating on a canal, slices of bread that have become shelves or even a chandelier shaken by a mechanism making it tremble at regular intervals also constitute the universe of Vincent Olinet, who seeks to " break the wait " that we have objects.
Vincent Olinet installed Pas encore mon histoire in the small marina on the Saint-Félix canal. NOT YET MY HISTORY, 2008 - COURTESY VINCENT OLINET AND GALERIE LAURENT GODIN / ADAGP
In total, the route includes about twenty new stages, among which we also notice the boots, three meters high and size 2000, by Lilian Bourgeat and the sculptures melted into the vegetation by Jean Jullien.