Under the artistic direction of Sandrina Martins and Moura Merzouki, Nuit Blanche 2021 set the city and its inhabitants in motion around the celebration of the body, sharing art in all its liveliness and unifying power.
The edition celebrated the relationship between art and sports and contributed to the launch of the Paris 2024 Cultural Olympiad, a program consisting of a series of artistic events organized in the host country before the Games.
This Nuit Blanche also served as an invitation to an urban walk along the GR 75, a long-distance hiking trail created for Paris’ bid for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Through four routes, visitors discovered performances, contemporary artworks, cultural and sporting heritage, as well as two contemporary art exhibitions.
Archives
Cascade et pirouettes polychromatiques
25 January 2021For Lionel Estève, it is the eye of the beholder to whom one must address when creating a work of art. He sculpts a monumental conglomerate that fits beautifully into the space of the Muse center, playing with the visitor’s perception. 50 polychrome volumes of varying dimensions come to life, subtly rotating to create an almost hypnotic effect.
But the striking effect is not solely due to the kinetic dimension of the work, as it is a play of color and transparency unfolding before our eyes. Neither exactly the same nor quite another, the work offers us a multitude of colored effects each time.
The movement allows the colors to be recomposed; when blue meets yellow, one is surprised by a green that did not exist before and disappears as quickly as it appeared. Then it’s a purple, an orange, a pink, an ochre, a magnificent palette unfolding before us. The interaction reaches its peak when one moves around the volume, trying to create one’s own color range. For Lionel Estève, his work must appeal to the pleasure of shapes and colors, provide a breath, and refresh the mind of the spectator.
Les Extatiques 2021 – Paris La Défense & La Seine Musicale
15 January 2021The year 4, a “re-birth” / a return to basics. For three years now, the name Les Extatiques, originally conceived for a first anniversary edition, has managed to establish itself, be recognized, and perpetuated.The event has managed to become part of the cultural calendar, highlighting its ambition to become an essential outdoor cultural event, akin to Le Voyage à Nantes or La Nuit Blanche.
The project also fits within the framework of the “re-birth” of the neighborhood through greening initiatives and the creation of new parks in Paris La Défense, as well as on the “biodiversity island” site of La Seine Musicale. A particular intention will thus be brought forth so that the artistic installations can express this “blossoming,” this flourishing of the sites.
Ici et maintenant, Iván Argote – 1% pour le nouveau campus de la Sorbonne
14 January 2021Ici et maintenant est une intervention sculpturale délicate qui passe par le langage et le dessin pour créer une atmosphère de pensées et d’inspirations qui circulent à travers le cloître comme un vent doux.
Elle est constituée de lignes de bronze qui deviennent textes, et de textes qui deviennent lignes, et qui proposent, tout en étant discrètes, des pensées fortes et intéressantes, en lien avec l’histoire de l’Université, avec la vie étudiante, avec des références littéraires, musicales, cinématographiques, philosophiques et populaires. Des jeux de mots perspicaces qui permettent d’enrichir le quotidien de l’université, d’éveiller de nouvelles pensées, d’intriguer, de faire réfléchir au moment présent, de faire rêver du futur, d’encourager ou encore de poser des questions.
L’oeuvre qui s’infiltre dans l’architecture crée des liens symboliques entre les espaces, et peut, à terme, constituer une sorte de nomenclature parallèle symbolique pour certains espaces : le coin où l’on devient invisible, le lieu où l’on court vers la mer, celui qui porte bonheur, celui où l’on sent le printemps.
Un Eté au Havre 2021
14 January 2021Un Eté au Havre returns in 2021!
The cultural event “Un Eté au Havre” is back for a new edition in 2021. Still under the artistic direction of Jean Blaise, this ambitious encounter with art, heritage, and culture unfolds each season in Le Havre, enriching the collection of artworks in public spaces.
Since 2019, the GIP Summer in Le Havre has entrusted the delegated production of the event to Eva Albarran & Co.
Delegated production: Eva Albarran & Co // Technical direction: Ateliers Puzzle // General management: Prométhée Concept
Les oiseaux sont mes muses
13 January 2021For Muse, Chourouk Hriech has chosen to design a journey through 7 totems of different sizes in painted metal and adhesive, which feature designs from the environment in which they are installed and are illuminated in the evening with a colorful halo. The artist first drew inspiration from the name of the Muse shopping center itself and then from the architectures of sites in Metz. Thus, you can recognize the water tower of the train station or the Centre Pompidou-Metz reinterpreted by Chourouk Hriech.
Indeed, nature freely resurfaces in the interstices of these urban landscapes, and birds, a recurring motif in the artist’s work, are inscribed on each totem as the guiding thread of this visual journey.
Stemming from Chourouk Hriech’s impressions and memories of frequently traversing the city, these drawings transcend time and space and, through them, tell the story of Metz. They are an invitation to unleash the imagination, to travel into the artist’s world, and to discover Metz from a poetic perspective. Intrigued, we are invited to lift our gaze towards the sky along each totem while wandering through this vertically-oriented forest.
Nuit Blanche 2020
4 September 2020Annual artistic event dedicated to contemporary art, Nuit Blanche is organized by the city of Paris, every first Saturday of October since 2002.
Following the first metropolitan edition in 2019, Nuit Blanche is co-organized this year with the Métropole du Grand Paris, for an edition that extends throughout the metropolitan area. For one night (from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.), contemporary creation in all its forms is celebrated in the city, in public spaces, in prestigious monuments, and in buildings that are usually unknown or inaccessible. The event is free and open to all.
We live at the heart of a contradiction: in the enjoyment of a frenetic activity (economic, technological, tourist, social as well) that is increasingly detached from the natural world, and in the unprecedented awareness that this activity is weakening our humanity – a fact that we are reminded of by a virus probably transmitted by the pangolin, one of the most poached mammals on the planet.
Is it possible to slow down? Is it possible to rethink the rationalist, extractivist and anthropocentric way in which we live and see the world? Is it possible to make room for a more poetic relationship, a compositional relationship with the plurality of worlds – human, vegetable, animal – in their infinite variety?
The times invite us to build this common presence, in the words of René Char, to take part in life in all its complexity, with its «marvellous share of rebellion of charity», its equivocal share of mystery, uncertainty and discovery.
The Nuit Blanche 2020 will propose to turn our eyes, and all our senses, towards the immense richness of life, to learn to be attentive to it in a different way.
If a whole current of human sciences (anthropology, philosophy, political science) and earth sciences is today calling for this change of perspective, some artists are also drawing it, sometimes for a long time, by imagining openings, crossroads, in our experience of the world.
The list of artists and works of art is currently being drawn up, as are the itineraries, revolving around the museums of Modern Art in Paris, Bourdelle, Zadkine, and the Petit Palais.
Jeanne Brun, Fabrice Hergott, Christophe Leribault, Amélie Simier
Sortilèges – Elisabeth Ballet
4 September 20201% artistique de l’Université de Nantes (Campus du Tertre)
« I stretched cords from bell tower to bell tower;
garlands from window to window;
golden chains from star to star, and I dance.»
With this miniature poem by Arthur Rimbaud deployed on the roofs of the Faculty of Letters in Nantes, Elisabeth Ballet creates an immense scene that evokes a runway and suggests the portrait of the poet as a rope dancer. This dream of takeoff, carried by vibrant words linked to breath, respiration, its cadences, and rhythms, fits into the multiple perspectives of the campus rehabilitated to greet the infinite openness to the world.
Commissioned by: University of Nantes
Production: Eva Albarran & Co
Realization: Métalobil
© Photo by Fanny Trichet
Idle Mode – Loris Gréaud
19 August 2020Idle Mode
MO.CO. Hôtel des collections, Montpellier, 2019
Taking his cue from the crumpled plan of the building, Loris Gréaud has created a unique neon suspension light that covers the ceiling of the Hôtel des collections’ bar, providing an original twist to a space dedicated to sharing and conviviality. In video game parlance, “idle mode” refers to when a player is at rest and sets aside the controller. Often the game’s developers provide a loop animation so that the character continues to “live” autonomously as it awaits further instructions. Loris Gréaud’s, “idle mode” alludes to the way the piece is activated or inactive depending on the presence of viewers. When the space is occupied (when the bar is open) the work looks like a lighting element used to illuminate the venue. When, on the other hand, the bar is empty, the work enters into motion and pulsation. The light fitting starts vibrating, morphing. We begin to hear a sound clip featuring a cut-up of William S. Burroughs’ “Electronic revolution” interpreted by Abel Ferrara. The work, and therefore the location in itself, is placed in idle mode.
https://vimeo.com/manage/344662362/general
© Loris Gréaud, Gréaudstudio, Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin I Paris I London, MoCo
Formule du temps, monographic exhibition of Angelika Markul – CIAP Vassivière
19 July 2020FORMULE DU TEMPS
A monographic exhibition of ANGELIKA MARKUL at the Centre International d’art et du paysage de l’île de Vassivière.
Exhibition from 2 JUNE to 1 NOVEMBER 2020
At the frontier of art, science and science fiction, FORMULE DU TEMPS is a journey through time and space, which the Art Centre takes as its vessel.
Echoing the ambiguity of Vassivière’s territory, Angelika Markul proposes a series of immersive video installations, paintings and sculptures in wax and bronze. These new works plunge the visitor into unreal landscapes that question the origin of man, where the immensity of nature as well as technology occupy a central place.
www.ciapiledevassiviere.com
www.angelikamarkul.net/fr/