Works of art in the park

Jean Daviot, born in 1962 in Digne-les-Bains, studied at the Villa Arson in Nice and began his career in experimental cinema. He uses a variety of media: video, photography, painting and sound, as well as actions in the landscape to raise public awareness of the fragility of the environment. Jean Daviot is passionate about language in all its forms (words, sounds, signs or light…) and pays particular attention to its plasticity. He sculpts language as an object, revealing its alchemy and hidden meanings. Words say more than they seem to, and have fun leading us astray. Jean Daviot pushes them to withdraw into their deepest meanings, where they accentuate what seems trivial to us. His art draws on art history, prehistory, psychoanalysis and philosophy.

Dominique Bailly is a sculptor. She lives and works in Paris and Touraine. Since the mid-1970s, her work has reflected a contemplative relationship with the natural sites she has chosen as her home (Breton and Limousin forests, the Vendée coastline, the banks of the Loire).

His artistic approach, which is essentially based on his relationship with the landscape, follows two paths: the creation of sculptures in the studio and direct intervention in the landscape.

In her studio, she focuses on the intimate use of materials and research into form. Sections of oak, elliptical shapes in beech, redwood spheres one meter in diameter, populate her creations. For such works, she often resorts to serial production. This is the case for the volcanic bombs “Les larmes de la terre”, for the “ spheres ” or the “ blades “, which she then organizes into installations.
Some are simply placed on the ground, isolated or in precise alignment; others are suspended and scattered according to the place where they are exhibited. The artist arranges her pieces in such a way as to suggest an itinerary, while leaving the viewer free to move around as he or she pleases.
Drawing has always accompanied her research into form, in her sculptural work. Source : http://www.dominique-bailly.com/

Andy Goldsworthy was born in 1956 in Cheshire (UK). As a teenager, he worked on farms, where he came to appreciate the beauty of man-made nature, but also its harshness and the repetitive tasks imposed on farmers. This experience influenced his artistic development, as did his training at Bradford Art College in 1974. Since 1986, he has lived in the village of Penpont (Scotland), where he has set up his studio in an old stone granary. An artist of international renown, Goldsworthy works in many countries and landscapes.

Agathe Larpent, born in Paris in 1946, trained at the Ecole des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d’Art between 1967 and 1970. She settled in Thoard in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence region, where she still lives today. An emblematic figure of contemporary French ceramics, Agathe Larpent is not one of those artists for whom technique or the creative process take precedence over everything else; she inhabits the space of a singular ceramic expression where clay is metamorphosed, materials and colors blended with the sole aim of appealing to the senses.

Fabien Lerat was born in Paris in 1960. He is a graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he lives and works. He currently teaches at the Université de Picardie Jules Vernes in Amiens. Fabien Lerat has been active on the Paris art scene for many years. Since the 1990s, he has focused on conceptual art, with works that include a variety of interactions with the participating public: experiments, sometimes architectural, sometimes performative or sculptural, or all three put into relation. The explorations that his proposals carry out in space have the capacity to motivate visitors to take action.

Born in Canada in 1957, Catherine Marcogliese studied art history at Concordia University (Montreal). She has lived and worked in France since 1988. Although photography is always present in Catherine Marcogliese’s work, it is not the only medium. She installs her works using the resources of the environment: in this case, plants and water. With this outdoor installation, Catherine Marcogliese pursues a reflection on the difficulties man encounters when he wants to order nature, such as creating a “parterre”, a futile attempt to leave traces of a presence that will be erased by nature’s repossession of the site. the mind, the eye and the body in motion”.

Born in Krakow (Poland) in 1958, Janusz Stega lives and works in Lille. Trained at the École des Beaux arts de Tourcoing, Janusz Stega discovered in 1975 the existence of rubber rolls decorated with decorative motifs, used by house painters in his native country to create the illusion of wallpaper, which was very expensive at the time. Shortly afterwards, he systematically used these tools in his paintings and photographs: in both cases, a play is established between the motif created by the passage of the roller (decorative in nature) and the story it conceals. For him, these decorative motifs have become the letters of an indecipherable text, the only evidence of a bygone era.

Paul-Armand Gette, born in Lyon in 1927, is a photographer, video artist, sculptor and writer. He lives and works in Paris. An artist who likes to blur the lines, Paul-Armand Gette’s work is situated on the edges between art, science and nature, seeking out the metaphorical dimensions of physical places and landscapes. If there is a boundary between science and art, Paul-Armand Gette strives to blur it within his own work. An enthusiast of mythology, which he often uses as a pretext, he invokes two of his passions in his work: botany and women.

Henri Olivier, born in Algiers in 1955, lives and works in the Alpes Maritimes. Since 1980, his work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions. In addition to his work as an artist, Henri Olivier has also developed experience in gardening and landscaping. He has taught at the Ecole Méditerranéenne des Jardins et du Paysage in Grasse, acting as educational coordinator.
His work questions the relationship between sculpture and the garden, environment and landscape, as well as our own perception of space. As Allen S. Weiss, “his sculptures serve as catalysts to set the mind, the eye and the body in motion”.

Born in Quebec in 1964 and now living in Barcelona, Sylvie Bussières’ sculpture questions the meaning and logic of form, matter, memory and place. Initially based on interventions in nature, Sylvie Bussières’ work has evolved towards sculptural investigation using recycled materials. Today, the artist proposes creations based on the accumulation of ordinary objects, using a variety of techniques (found objects, photography, video).

Joan Fontcuberta, a contemporary Catalan artist, grew up under Franco’s dictatorship, and with it the censorship and falsification of information. A graduate in information science, theorist, critic, historian and teacher, his work questions all forms of so-called truth. Drawing on the possibilities offered by the photographic image and its capacity for manipulation, his work takes us into a reality that is both plausible and unusual. In his work Les hydropithèques, the chimera gains in credibility through the use and display of codes specific to scientific research. Everything is there to be authoritative. The fossil sites and the objects in the museum installation are evidence of the authenticity of the approach and its results. Initiated in Digne in 2000, this artistic project has been extended to Annecy and Salamanca.