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400m2
Command Publique of the Ministery of culture and communication and the Region Limousin in 2009
Born in 1967 in Séoul in Corée du sud , Koo Jeong-A lives and works everywhere.
OTRO is a daring skateable artwork, composed of different bowls, a cradle and three tunnels. Koo Jeong-A invites novices and experts to share the physical and sensorial experience of her work by “skating the landscape”.
At the time of her arrival in 2007 for her exhibition called Oussseux, Koo Jeong-A had been impressed by the mysterious winter landscapes of the island and the atmosphere that arose from it : Vassivière became Oussseux, an unreal, phantasmagoric and powerful dreamscape belonging to the imaginary world of the artist.
With OTRO, Koo Jeong-A tries out the fragile visibility of the artwork, its discrete appearance that tests our perception, obliging you to discover with patience the artwork’s essence.
The concept of OTRO, its ovoid shape, the use of green phosphorescent concrete, its progressive discovery, and its integration in the island meadow make this artwork become an infinite land of investigation, that reflects all details like the light, its link with the site, the atmospheres, the dream and the fantastical. OTRO is an artwork made of bumps – the cradle – and hollows – bowls and tunnels. This work of Koo Jeong-A refers to both definitions of sculpture and representation: hollows and bumps, shadows and lights, soft or accentuated reliefs.
It is an art work to live, to experiment, not only from a sporting point of view but also from a sensorial, sensitive and artistic point of view. It establishes the link between the urban, practicable, sporting and playful aspect of the artwork as a skate park and the artwork from an artistic point of view as part of Koo Jeong-A’s world.
OTRO, which is still currently a project, will be realised fully at Autumn 2010 by L’Escaut Architecture (Brussels) in collaboration with Brusk (Brussels) and Barricades (Poitiers) societies.
Copyright: Koo Jeong-A
Uniques tennis balls, variables dimensions
Deposit of the artist (owner the artist) in 2009
Born in Bucharest in Romania in 1951, Serge Spitzer lives and works in New York in the United States.
A protagonist of the artistic revolution of the late 60s, he began to develop a production of concepts based on “models of reality”. The play of tensions between visibility and invisibility, order and chaos, weight and fragile floating, statics and movement is a recurrent theme in Spitzer’s work, which includes references to multiple forms of social and political functionings. He combines artistic conventions with biological, technological or social systems to question the processes of communication, perception and awakening of conscience.
His works, shown in the most prestigious institutions and manifestations, are linked to their sites, such as Re/Cycle (Don’t Hold Your Breath) to the Venice Biennial, Re/Search (Alchemy and/or Question Marks with Swiss Air) to the Kunstmuseum in Bern, as well as his presence today in Istanbul with Molecular (ISTANBUL).
In a historical space in Istanbul, an old synagogue that today houses an aluminum foundry, a workshop that makes rubber, and a billiard saloon, Serge Spitzer’s installation functions like a pause for contemplation and reflection while in the other rooms the workers go about their routine activities.
The ephemeral project Still life on Vassivière Island, composed of tens of thousands of unique tennis balls in an area measuring a few hectares, is not a simple composition of static objects, as its title may ironically suggest. Fascinated by the multiplicities of typical landscapes, Serge Spitzer chose to terminate the cycle of creation of this highly enigmatic installation in the sculpture wood of Vassivière Island on the heights of the Deleuzean Plateau de Millevaches after having travelled in the “American BACKYARD” of the gardens of the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art at Ridgefield in 2008 and at the “Swiss ALPS” at Zuoz in 2009.
The work is a demonstration of an imperceptible "reality model" which propagates like a virus and presents itself as a physical metaphor of the way that art interacts with everyday life. As in numerous “viral sculptures” conceived since the 90s, the ephemeral structure that Serge Spitzer has installed in the Island meadow is transformed over time by uncontrolled and accidental forces: the balls will be swept away by wind, storm and rain, or else knocked out of place by visitors; now and again, children will be tempted to play or just take one; and the grass will grow slowly to recover the original.
Serge Spitzer has engaged in the design and the manufacturing process of this work to ensure the unique and at the same time ephemeral nature of each ball without any concern to preserve the work. So, on each used ball has been printed the image of a tiny detail of a piece of lawn photographed by the artist and then blown up to arrive at this pixelated green, a near-perfect mimetism of the places where they were implanted up to now.
Despite its very minimalist formal execution, Serge Spitzer’s project is entirely built around the imperfection of reality, with social and political overtones. His work takes possession of the surroundings with objects that imply at one and the same time notions of leisure, play and military occupation.
In the tradition of those artists who have used landscape as a vehicle for contemplation, Still life becomes a field for thinking.
Copyright : Jean-Baptiste Decavèle
Marne in bulk not dried, 324 m
Command publique du Ministère de la culture et de la communication for the Centre national des arts plastiques - Cnap (owner Cnap/Fnac) in 2009
Deposit of the architect and the Centre national des arts plastiques - Cnap in 2009
Born in 1923 in Budapest, Yona Friedman lives and works in Paris.
For Vassivière, Yona Friedman has created for his exhibition Etc. Balkis Island with Jean-Baptiste Decavèle presented from the 5th July to 1st December 2009, The Unicorn of Vassivière ("Unicorn Eiffel"), an ephemeral sculptures that takes up the whole area in front of the Art Center, drawn on the ground with a mineral substance (carbonate) and completely visible from the top of the lighthouse built by Aldo Rossi to dominate the island. the silhouette of the dog Balkis playing at some distance from the Unicorn was made by plannung Sarrasin wheat grains.
The reference to Incan civilization is explicit, with the imagination carried through the zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figuration surrounded by a maze of geometric shapes like those still seen in the South of the high plateaus at Naszca.
Copyright: Jean-Baptiste Decavèle, Yona Friedman, Les voyages extraordinaires (le voyage à la licorne spatiale), 2009
PVC, plastic sheet, 400 x 528 cm
Commande publique of the Ministère de la culture et de la communication (owner Ciap) in 2007
Born in Worm in Germany in 1935, Hans Walter Müller lives and works in La Ferté–Alais in France.
An engineer and architect from the Polytechnic School in Darmstadt in Germany, Hans Walter Müller pursued his studies in Paris and engaged in architectural studies with the material of his time: artificial light, projected image, sound, plastic, electric motors, all at the service of the “architecture of movement”. He belonged to the kinetic art movement, whose spirit he prolonged and opened to new fields of experience applied to architecture, which have now become the “architecture of air”.
The three inflatable modules conceived for the Centre international d’art et du paysage of Vassivière Island under the auspices of a public commission of the Ministry of Culture and Communications, subscribe to the cultural policy of the Art Center. The idea is to create a new type of equipment that is both a work of architect an d a mobile pedagogic tool designed to be transported, installed and practiced as a play space for discove ry and a meeting place, in keeping with the notion of a “pavilion-garden”.
The conception of an architecture of air, light and nomadic, its ability to be used principally as a teaching tool, its easy and playful installation on a converted platform which is in itself functional and ecological, are the bases of this project. In the sculpture park, Hans Walter Müller’s three modules offer different architectural particularities in respect to the different geographical sites: the forest, the lake and Aldo Rossi’s architecture.
Copyright: Marc Domage
PVC, plastic cloth, wooden platform, engine, 400 x 528 cm in diameter
Born 1935 in Worm (Germany), Hans Wlater Müller lives and works in La Ferté-Alais.
Hans Walter Müller's inflatable structures can be grasped in many fashion : playful, ephemeral, memories of a nomadic time... All of this is true but this process encompasses real questions towards architectur e and its many uses. This modules are also providing real solutions to chosen way of lives. The pair of creators, Marie-France Vesperini and Hans Walter Müller are for twenty years embarked in the great adventure of living under, inside, with an inflatable habitat serving many functions (protective skin as well as screening surface). They have been entrusted with the mission of bringing back to life this fascinating page of the history of architecture that is telling about the party, about nomadism and about a new way of considering our relationship with nature and our environment.
Born 1935 in Worm (Germany), Hans-Wlater Müller lives and works in La Ferté-Alais.
Hans-Walter Müller is the true inventor of the "inflatables", those inhabitable air architectures. For more than 30 years, Hans-Walter Müller, artist that belonged to the 60's cinetic art movement, is developing a nomadic, ephemeral, light and easy to use architecture. In 1971, the architect settles in one of this inflatables on the grounds of the Cerny airfield in the Ferté-Alais forest (Essonne). Amidst the trees, surrounded by ponds filled with aquatic plants and rare fishes, the yellow bubble shelters workshops, work and recreational area that are laid out on sliding planking. Underground, carved in the rock, are the domestic and rest areas which are opening on the outside (terraces, picture windows).
"An inflatable, explains Hans-Walter Müller, is simply a skin containing a space, separating the outside from the inside, appearing and disappearing and sometimes dematerializing. In this its a playful, fantastic and unusual space, very far from the traditional building techniques".
Various plants, variable size
Commande of the Syndicat mixte "le Lac de de Vassivière" (owner Syndicat mixte "le Lac de de Vassivière") in 2003
Born 1943 in Argenton-sur-Creuse, Gilles Clément works and lives in Crozan in Creuse in France and in Paris in France.
Gilles Clément, horticultural engineer, landscape artist, writer, gardener, teaches at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Paysage at Versailles. Apart from his activities as creator of parks, gardens, both public and private spaces, he's currently engaged in theoretical and practical research along three main axis : the Jardin en mouvement (moving garden), a concept born from the practice of his own garden in Creuse, the Jardin planétaire (planetary garden), political project for a humanistic ecology, the Tiers-Paysage (Third-Landscape), a concept born from analysis on Limousin's landscapes.In 2003, Gilles Clément, proposes, following a commission from the Syndicat "le lac de Vassivière", a landscape planning document for Vassivière prompting the cration of various gardens around the lake and on the island. the island is perceived by the landscape artist as a group of "interdependent spaces", as in a place where one goes from one ambiance to the next : building vicinity, in bloom meadows, shaded woods ...Gilles Clément's landscape charter underlines the diversity of this ensemble removed from the farming areas (diversity of species, landscapes, "gardens"). Considering the lake as the landscape's theatrical background, from any point of view possible, Clément must integrate it as a major asset of the landscape while taking into account its summertime use. This project, the one of its kind in Europe, aims to maintain or improve the components of the ecological balance, as the only way to solve harmoniously and cost-effectively the aesthetic components. With this approach, landscape are environment are intimately linked.The charter specifies a series of management recommendations on particular topics like farming and forest management, the care and valorization of noticeable natural sites ... ; the detailed charter presenting a series of development projects for the site.
The Syndicat "le lac de Vassivière" chooses as a first implementation of the charter, the creation of a blooming meadow on the south side of the island allowing the enhancement of an undeveloped part of the island though very visible from the beach and the point of view of Auphelle. A square shaped plot of land (2500 m2) was then implanted to increase visibility. Another plot (1100 m2) was planted nearby on a location with an interesting visual impact (vicinity to the footpath, slope, visibility from the castle's square).
Copyright: Syndicat "le Lac de Vassivière"
Iron, 210 x 364 x 304cm
Deposit of the artist (owner artist) in 2007
Born in Turin in Italy in 1972, Marco Boggio Sella works in New York in United States.
Marco Boggio Sella’s formal process springs from a reflection on the visual and psychological impact of the work of art on the spectator and the interpretation that the spectator makes of it.
Untitled (2003), representing a German helmet which is both monumental and rusty, functions as a metaphor for the weight of History, still deeply anchored in our minds. The act of reproducing this emblematic object in a hyper-realistic and over-dimensioned manner transforms it into a representation of the concept itself.
What at first glance reminds us of a painful and violent image of our contemporary society is revealed as a troubling vehicle of memory. The rust that covers the object, associated with its relic nature, annuls all doubts as to the possibility of a commemorative reading of this sculpture.
In placing this work on Vassivière Island, on land that resisted the Nazi invaders, the artist wanted to reactivate our duty to remember by echoing the ever-living memory of the local population.
Marco Boggio Sella thus erected a rusted and abandoned representation of Nazism. Here the helmet, a relic of those dark times, stands imposing in all its volume, forcing us to a permanent confrontation with History.
Courtesy: Marc Domage
2.5 x 4.8 x 4.8m
Deposited by a private collector (owner collector) in 2007
Born in Germany in 1979, Michael Sailstorfer lives and works in Berlin in Germany.
Michael Sailstorfer likes to take apart vehicles or objects, an activity that enables him to understand the interior of all sorts of constructions that surround him. But if he disassembles, it is above all for the purpose of rebuilding better and giving a new life to the original object. By means of this process of metamorphosis which is at the same time both work and play, he applies himself to creating a work that, equipped with a new name, sets a sto ry machine in motion.
Michael Sailstorfer refers consciously to artistic strategies of past generations and uses them to unmask the tragedy of their seriousness.
Waldputz’s radical conquest of artistic space in nature becomes a piece of forest that is carefully cleaned by hand. An artistic strategy easily reminiscent of Richard Long or Michael Heizer, yet – given the vain and absurd character of the task – the meticulous way in which it is produced, and the transitory nature of the result, represent an ardent, Utopian and finally tragic desire.
Faced with works of this sort that are sensitive and extremely pragmatic in terms of construction, but at the same time absurd, one perceives at once the poetry, desire, euphoria and irony of the production, and the melancholy of its achievement.
Copyright: André Morin
Variable technics and dimensions
Commande publique of the Ministère de la culture et de la communication (owner Ciap) in 2003
Born in Saint Georges de Didonne in 1959, Erik Samakh lives and works in Serres in the Haute-Provence Alps.
Erik Samakh’s thought is the opposite of any desire for enshrinement that excludes human presence from protected nature. He is interested in modes of behavior and communications, in the relation between things rather than the things themselves, including in this process all living things, which also includes the public. For him, in no case does the relation to nature take the form of romantic isolation and a retreat from the social field.
The installation of Grains of Lights took place at the same time as The Tijuca Dreams, after the storm. As much at ease with nature as with technology, Erik Samakh produces a work among the trees on the Island, an autonomous work comprised of three hundred and fifty Grains of Lights that are charged during the day with solar energy before transforming at nightfall into a constellation of stars.
Aluminium and resin, solar collector, turbine and electronics, 70 X 10 cm
Born in Saint Georges de Didonne in France in 1959, Erik Samakh lives and works in Serres in the Haute-Provence Alps in France.
For Vassivière, Erik Samakh conceived an installation of thirty solar flutes installed on a site of over 30 hectares. The sounds of The Flute Players are always quite short and have various tonalities, because each module, with the autonomous energy of its solar captor, breathes air into a unique-modeled flute. The source of solar energy introduces a modulation of intensities according to the rays of light. These two parameters contribute together to a permanent renewing of sound until the silence of night. This variation coincides with the milieu itself. Like so many animals, the flutes react to the alternates of day and night as well as to weather conditions. Erik Samakh mixes in his work his interest in nature and his interest in technology. He would like the interface with the user to be as direct as possible and for the spectator not to see the technological machines.
In early 2002, the Centre international d’art et du paysage invited Erik Samakh to take part in an exchange program among artists, landscape gardeners, architects and actors of local life (inhabitants, elected representatives, etc.) to produce in situ the replanting of 2,500 trees and bushes by the inhabitants of a region wasted by monoculture and storm. The Tijuca Dreams are a re-invention of garden art and lend us the opportunity to reflect on biodiversity, participative culture, the role of sound in the perception of space and development of territories.
Concrete 50 x 230 x 63cm
Commande of the Centre d'art (owner Frac Limousin/Conseil régional du Limousin) in 2005
Born in Bern in Swiss in 1944, Olivier Mosset lives and works in Arizona in United States.
Ever since 1964, Olivier Mosset has found himself in the context of critical analysis of painting. The chosen shape, a black circle painted in the center of a square, becomes a signature for him before he starts to adopt monochromes, a practice that derives from seeing painting as an object. Settled since 1977 in the United States, there he pursues extremely coherent work painting around questions concerning signature, anonymity, appropriation and repetition.
Maillol’s famous sculpture, Hommage to Cézanne was commissioned in 1912 by a committee of artists from Aix-en-Provence. For Maillol, this classical composition of a statue of a clothed woman carrying an olive branch was the best way to evoke painting. The work was installed in the Tuileries Gardens, then removed to near the Louvre without its original pedestal and offered to the Museum of Modern Art of the city of Paris.
Strolling in the Tuileries Gardens, Olivier Mosset discovered the abandoned pedestal with the inscription "To Paul Cézanne". He had a copy of this stone made at Bienne.
Showed at the Centre international d’art et du paysage of Vassivière Island in 2004, he has presented this work which signs the landscape in unusual fashion, both by Paul Cézanne and by Olivier Mosset.
Copyright: Jean-Denis Frater
Wood, 210 x 160 x 180cm
Commande of the Centre d'art (owner artists) in 2005
Born respectively 1933 and 1945 in Russia, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov live and work in New York in United States.
Ilya Kabakov began his career as an artist as a painter and illustrator of children’s books. Since his debut in the 80s, he has dedicated himself to showing contemporary Russian everyday life through installations that travel all over the world.
Toilet on the mountain is a work conceived in 1999 and then presented in the Centre international d'art et du paysage de l'île de Vassivière in 2004. This installation, placed on a high spot facing the lake, takes the form of provisional wooden toilets. In fact, if you approach the work in the direction of the lake, you will discover that there are two compartments, neither of which has doors. This is isolation vis-à-vis society: a folding over into oneself that brings both tranquility and a sense of solitude and offers a privileged panorama on the lake and its surroundings.
Granite, wool and silk tapestry, 1 x 0.6 x 1m
Commande publique of the Ministère de la culture et de la communication helped by the Centre national des arts plastiques - Cnap (deposit of the Cnap/Fnac) in 1997
Born in Grenoble in 1962 in France, Frédéric Ollereau lives and works in Paris in France.
The House of Wool is made of two elements: a block of granite in the shape of a house on which is laid a wool and silk tapestry woven at the "Courant d’art" studio in Aubusson. The tapestry, representing on the six sides of the structure a human limb and installed outdoors, underwent consecutive degradations due to various periods of bad weather and deteriorated in the course of time.
Each element of the work shows the artist’s proposal: “During the actual production, the tapestry can be perceived as the symbol of certain everyday preoccupations. Stitch after stitch, like so many pieces accomplished in solitude, this gesture can testify to the act of subsistence: it forms a whole, a protecting envelope. […] The House of Wool in the size of a body bent upon itself in a position of defense offers refuge against everydayness and seals in closed spaces. Without any tearing or bursting out, the body constrained by reduced space – which is both protecting and jailing – returns to an opaque and clandestine reality. Anonymous again.The House of Wool is the result of a specific reflection on the identity of the individual in urban social space.
The House of Wool, abandoned like graffiti, will let erosion take care of removing little by little all traces of its passage in this place. The work thus renews the use of tapestry, a medium usually attached to the idea of permanence. Tapestry that generally decorates interiors now finds itself outdoors; the skeleton becomes a skin, then disappears to allow another skeleton to appear, one in stone structure. The long weaving work comes undone through time; the house blends into nature. The skeleton is dislocated, like a broken puppet come all unhinged with progressive use. The loss of the work is uncontrollable, the spending irremediable.
Copyright: Jacques Hoepffner
Iron, pvc, 210 x 360 x 280cm
Commande of the Centre d'art (owner Ciap) in 2000
Born in Lons-le Saunier in France in 1967, Jacques Julien lives and works in Paris and Besançon in France.
Different sports activities (football, basketball, golf…) are the exclusive resource of Jacques Julien’s work. It is this monomania that lends his pieces the air of simplicity and familiarity, exhibiting a deliberately faded imagination. Jacques Julien plays on space metonymically: despite the obvious sculptural graciousness, the piece is not at all an object locked in its function or in its volume. < ;/span>
Heaped on the floor, cut into sections, three basketball baskets and their frames are exposed like bits of a puzzle in a spherical shape that is imperfect, voluminous and open. This work enables us to draw closer to Jacques Julien’s approach, which sees sport as representing a system made of laws and rules that the players must obey. Sports grounds, with their designs, dimensions, and peculiar topography are precisely there to remind us what these rules and tangible signs mean. In sports, then, the suggested system, the presupposed laws and rules, as well as the engagement that is required and the improvement that is demanded, may resemble the world we live in, a world that is structured, ruled and organized. Accordingly, by representing the world of sport in such a chaotic, de-structured, deformed and truncated way, Jacques Julien invites us to question our own world and how it functions.
Blue neons, 26 x 11cm
Commande of the Centre d'art (owner Ciap) in 2002
Born in Algeria in 1971, Adel Abdessemed lives and works in Berlin in Germany.
Adel Abdessemed’s work represents a form of political engagement/investment which stresses exile, resistance and subversion.
Comparing the contradictions of African and Western culture, the artist became interested in their taboos and the way to transcend them. He pursues another relentless quest: individual and collective identity. In Abdessemed’s work there is always a tension between the great poetry of the image and the violence of the idea that it represents. For war is ever present, even in the most idyllic of environments, which yields this notion of Exile, in the form of a blue neon presented above the entrance of the Art Center built by Aldo Rossi on Vassivière Island. < ;/span>
Adel Abdessemed chose the title “Exile” not only because he heard it so often when he arrived in France, but also because of the paradox that it holds: it means at the same time leaving and settling, here and there, the drama of the foreigner. The blue neon “Exile” explicitly unites “exile” and “exit” by playing on the ambiguity of its site.
Rusty steel, metallic or painted, cut concrete, 565 x 31 x 300 cm
Commande of the Centre d’art (owner Ciap) in 1997
Born in Cahors in France in 1940, Bernard Pagès lives and works in Nice in France.
“This is a sculpture specially conceived for Vassivière. The sculpture spends its time swaying its hips. Its splits are the antithesis of the stability of the lighthouse. Its indentations and projections contradict one another and in their opposition correct themselves. It is built in a succession of returns and inversions. The heaviest and densest part in colored concrete stands high, supported by fine entwinements of metal, all the frailer for being dangerously twisted. It is as if it had been jostled and had partly sunk under the pressure. The metal flames that unroll at the top seem to be fleshier and therefore heavier than the slender bars at the base. Only this low section is metallic. The rust, instead of climbing, seems paradoxically to descend towards the ground. The acid-green bands that encircle the upper part recall the painted IPN lintels used in construction, and their oval shape recalls the small brick vaults around the tower. At the same time, this green highlights the fire of the rust and the acidity of the color of the concrete. But the point of view is always like searching for balance.” (Bernard Pagès)
Painted metal tubes, 100 x 100 x 1000 cm
Commande publique of the Ministère de la culture et de la communication helped by the Centre national des arts plastiques - Cnap (deposit of the Cnap/Fnac) in 1996
Born in Bochum in Germany in 1960, Veit Stratmann lives and works in Paris in France.
For Veit Stratmann, the work of art is not something that is finished. The work remains unfinished because above all else it is a tool, an architectural mechanism, a game ...
Untitled (Piece for Hellerau) is a machine that invites the spectator to take a stance, to express a desire. It constitutes a materialization and a discussion of the concepts that gave rise to the place for which it was conceived (a building sheltering an old Soviet military installation in the Hellerau district in Dresden). The structure can be installed wherever the function corresponds to one or more points of the content that are put forward for discussion by the piece. The work is only considered entire to the extent that it is used by the spectator.
Metal, 0,70m
Commande of the Centre d’art (owner Ciap) in 1996
Born in Prague in Czechoslovakia in 1942, Vladimir Skoda lives and works in Paris in France.
Vladimir Skoda came to study in France in 1968, when he abandoned painting in favor of sculpture in the studios of the National Higher School of Fine Arts of Paris in 1969. As of 1975, working in iron and steel enabled him to resolve the problem of representation; the energy of the body, in its rapport with the material, came to substitute it. Then forms derived from simple geometry appeared, enabling him to articulate what the material dictated to him, from the preliminary drawing to the project. The first “balls”, “spinning tops” or “pyramids” were the result. At Vassivière, Skoda’s work found an ideal place in the form of a circle close to a small wall.
, palatino;">“I like simple, elementary things. If I use geometric forms, it’s not because I am austere but because they are firm”, declares Skoda. Insisting on the capacity of resistance of his materials and forms, he goes on: “Metal can deform, change from one shape to another without losing anything. The irreducible mass of metal, the sphere that resists all points of view, and the firmness of geometry allow me to keep the physical presence of the work and to affirm it manifestly against the inconsistency of objects”.
Construction in wood and windows, water, 2.5 by 3.1 x 2.1 x 3m
Commande of the Centre d’art (owner Ciap) in 1995
Born in Oslo in Norway in 1955, Per Barclay lives and works in Paris in France.
Vannhus (Waterhouse) was created for an individual exhibit by the artist at the Vassivière Art Center. The work, situated on a wooded slope overlooking the lake, represents a construction in wood, with no doors, and filled with water up to the bottom of the four windows.
Thanks to the declivity of the terrain, the angles of vision change: through the windows, the spectator discovers points of view framed by the landscape, the lake and forest, the interior space of the house reflecting on the surface of the water.
The place is one of the active elements in the way that Per Barclay’s works unfold; architecture and nature are his main references. Water is a major presence in his work, used at the same time for its powerful symbolic content (the source of life, birth, tears, the sea, and so on) and its plastic qualities (transparence, sound, the ability to flow and not be captured).
White neon tubes hanging from trees in the forest
Commande of the Centre d’art (owner Ciap) in 1994
Born in La Clayette in Saône et Loire in 1958 in France, Anne Marie Jugnet lives and works in Paris in France.
Installed in a dark forest of conifers, hanging among the trees, two words - “errors” and “exact” - are written in white neon. Small in size and guided by two spindles, they are visible and legible from the edge of the forest. The use of light, the specific choice of written words and the environment in which the work is situated are all features of Anne Marie Jugnet’s production. This work contains aspects of wandering and research, and does not reflect a single point of view. “Error” comes from the Latin errare: to wander, while “exact” comes from exigere: to conclude. (Anne Marie Jugnet, 1994)
Most of Anne Marie Jugnet’s works are composed of words or short phrases, and the artist seeks to communicate with the spectator through the use of writing. In his text "Writing the invisible”, Michel Bourel explains the artist’s process: “She extracts from the text-reservoir words and expressions that reinforce the essentially mysterious dimension of her work. She establishes an extremely allusive means of communication, far indeed from the research of advertising persuasion that sometimes borrows this language resource. […] The communicating aspect is stres sed, and even at the core of her work she cares for plastic dimensions with extreme attention, exploring - in what is manifest and what is invisible - the relation of those who have to see to read and read to see the work, and thus reach its meaning.”
Sequoia, cement, 4 x 2.2m
Born in l’Allier in France in 1957, Roland Cognet lives and works in Jussat and Paris in France.
Roland Cognet is a sculptor in the traditional sense of the term. He uses simple, natural or industrial materials and creates elementary shapes often taken directly from a matrix of the material.
Here organic or natural (the sequoia trunk) are placed parallel to the industrial, the fabricated (cement) by the casting technique. In this way the artist proposes a reflection on symmetry and duality which underlines the particular rapport between architect and the natural environment of the Art Center.
According to Roland Cognet, the question of the model is posed, and simple technical attitudes such as casting, modeling and direct carving are rich in meaning. For him, working directly with the tree offers proximity with the landscape. Roland Cognet realized that it was “natural” to find a bit of felled tree in this place (the Art Center is surrounded by woods), but his casting, simply placed alongside, was about to shake this perception and become, with the cutting of the tree, an imperceptible happening.
Granite, steel, bronze, 150 x 150 x 15cm
Command of the Art Center (owner Ciap) in 1994
Born in Guingamp in 1957, Hervé Le Nost lives and works in Cast in France.
Hervé Le Nost’s work is entirely dedicated to liquid, to fluidity. Following the exhibit “Island, earth, water, sky” presented at the Art Center in 1994, the artist installed a series of forms representing Vassivière Island in different materials (bronze, steel, granite, skin, porcelain and electric light) that are displayed in the exhibit space on the ground and on the wall. The presence of each material is justified either in the history of the site or by its color.
Later on he chose to reinstall two of his sculptures, (in steel and in granite), one in the park, above a fishing area on which floats another bronze form representing the Island in reduced dimensions. The fishing area is witness to a process of deterioration of this irregular and insular form, with each particular material being exposed in order to memorize and qualify a succession of periods before and after this earth was isolated by the waters (from the stone age to the post-modern period).
As a result of the building of a dam, Vassivière Island is artificial and consequently an entirely separate artifact. Water gave it its shape, sculpted it. In this double game of representation and reality – where nature stops and culture begins – the place for exhibition becomes the piece itself. Since all art is artifice, the Island becomes a metaphor for a reflection on the nature of art.
Seven Volvic lava stones placed at crossings, 10 x 210 x 120 cm
Commande publique of the Ministère de la culture et de la communication (owner Ciap) in 1994
Born in 1933 in Biella in Italy, Michelangelo Pistoletto still lives and works there.
“The work consists in seven sculptures in Volvic lava stone installed horizontally on the ground, that is to say, buried their full thickness so that they are flush and can be stood on and trodden … Each element is laid out at the crossing of two or more paths, following a ring movement that develops inside the wooded slope of the Island, along the route usually taken by visitors. The project is called Il Segno Arte (Sign Art), for which