• Château, Historic Grounds and Stables
    • The Château
      • The historical apartments
      • The private apartments
      • A brief history
      • Chaumont and its owners
    • The Historic Grounds
    • The Stables
      • The horse-drawn vehicles
      • The great stable
  • Centre for Arts and Nature
    • 2022 Art Season
    • Special commission from the Region
      • Special commission - Archives
    • Archives
      • Chaumont-Photo-sur-Loire
      • 2021 Art Season
      • 2020 Art season
      • Chaumont-Photo-sur-Loire
      • 2019 Art season
      • Chaumont-Photo-sur-Loire 2018-2019
      • 2018 Art season
      • Chaumont-Photo-sur-Loire 2017-2018
      • 2016-2017 Season: Trees in Winter
      • 2016 Art season
      • 2015 Art season
      • 2014 Art season
      • 2013 art season
      • 2012 art season
      • 2011 art season
      • 2010 Art season
      • 2009 art season
      • Art season 2008
  • International Garden Festival
    • 2022 edition
    • Archives
  • Cultural programme and events
  • News
  • Restaurants
    • Le Grand Velum
    • Le Comptoir des Tilleuls
    • L'Estaminet
    • Le Café du Parc
  • Practical information
  • Boutiques
  • Press review
  • Espace Presse / Press
    • 2022 - Visuels / Visuals
    • 2022 - Dossiers de presse / Press Pack
    • Archives
      • 2021 - VISUELS / VISUALS
      • 2021 - Dossiers de presse / Press Pack
      • 2020 - Visuels / Visuals
      • 2020 - Dossiers de presse / Press Pack
      • 2019 - Dossiers de presse / Press Pack
      • 2019 - Visuels / Visuals
      • 2018 - Dossiers de presse / Press Pack
      • 2018 - Visuels / Visuals
      • 2017 - Dossiers de presse / Press Pack
      • 2017 - Visuels / Visuals
      • 2016 - Dossiers de presse / Press Pack
      • 2016 - Visuels / Visuals
      • 2015 - Dossiers de presse / Press Pack
      • 2015 - Visuels / Visuals
      • 2014 - Dossiers de presse / Press Pack
      • 2014 - Visuels / Visuals
      • 2013 - Dossiers de presse / Press Pack
      • 2013 - Visuels / Visuals
      • 2012 - Dossiers de presse / Press Pack
      • 2012 - Visuels / Visuals
      • 2011 - Dossiers de presse / Press Pack
      • 2011 - Visuels / Visuals
      • 2010 - Dossiers de presse / Press Pack
      • 2010 - Visuels / Visuals
      • 2009 - Dossiers de presse / Press Pack
      • 2009 - Visuels / Visuals
      • 2008 - Dossiers de presse / Press Pack
      • 2008 - Visuels / Visuals
  • Groups and Tourism Professionals
    • Tourism professionals
    • Contact the sales department
  • Restaurants
  • Practical information
  • Boutique en ligne
  • Contact
  • Contact
  • Regional Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire
  • Partners
  • Legal notices
Ticketing
Ticketing Restaurants Practical information Boutique en ligne Contact
English en
  • Français
  • English
  • Deutsch
  • Italiano
  • Español
  • Nederlands
  • 日本語
  • 简体中文
  • Portuguese
  • Русский
  • Restaurants
  • Practical information
  • Boutiques
  • Press review
  • Espace Presse / Press
  • Groups and Tourism Professionals
Château, Historic Grounds and Stables Centre for Arts and Nature International Garden Festival Cultural programme and events News
2022 Art Season Special commission from the Region Archives
  • Centre for Arts and Nature
  • Archives
2021 Art Season
Guests’ apartments and Entrance hall, Château

A. Pascal Convert

"Chambre intérieure cristallisée" and "Les Trois anges"

published at 02/02/2021
Chambre intérieure cristallisée, installation de Pascal Convert pour le Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, 2021 - © Éric Sander
“Every artwork created by Pascal Convert portrays incredible depth, rare emotional power, emanating from the subjects and objects that endlessly catch his gaze. Questions of memory are at the heart of this artist’s creations, whether through photography of the Bamiyan Buddhas, or sculptures and engravings of places of war, traces and impressions left behind, always centred around topics that we find distressing, and heartbreaking suffering.
What could be more natural than this artist and filmmaker’s relationship with books and libraries that change our outlook on the world, and open our minds. But, by using a fascinating process, that almost resembles transsubstantiation, he goes way beyond the attraction for these wise tools, and by pouring molten glass into them, crystallises the memory contained in these books, preserving this memory at the very core of his sculptures. At the Château of Chamont-sur-Loire, at a place where ironically, the works of the Princesse de Broglie were destroyed in a fire in 1957, the petrified books of Pascal Convert encasing the very soul of the text in translucent glass will be exhibited, bringing back this memory to the Broglie family library, to ensure that it will live on for eternity, in our own memories.”  Chantal Colleu-Dumond, Memento, 2020
Chambre intérieure cristallisée
This stunning curved bed made of glass with a beaded white sand effect is a fragile presence. Arabesques of wrought iron act like a protective cage around a child’s sleep. In this seemingly innocent space, far from the hubbub of the outside world, in a flicker of light: “life is lived, life is dreamed, and life is suffered.1"
 
On one side, now immortal night lights in the form of candelabras with rough crystal edges, which seal in glass the dazzling flame of candles whose internal reflection no longer lights up the window after sunset. 
On the other side, crystallised glass mirror frames no longer reflect multiple images of self, but are like cut-out screens, open like books.
This room - immobilised in dreamlike transparency - wavering between liberty and security, between presence and absence, shelters a simmering inner consciousness.
 
"Art is a true transmutation of matter. Here, matter is spiritualised, physical environments are dematerialised, to refract the essence, like the quality of an original world​.2"
 
Glass imprint of an old wrought-iron crib (130 x 60 x 80 cm), crystallisation of a pair of wooden 18th-century candlesticks (63 cm), crystallisation of three wooden mirror frames (22 x 26 cm – 24 x 28 cm – 30 x 42 cm)
Master glassmaker: Olivier Juteau
2021
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Éric Dupont, Paris
 
[1] Charles Baudelaire, Les fenêtres, in Petits poèmes en prose, 1869.
[2] Gilles Deleuze, Marcel Proust et les signes, Presses universitaires de France, Paris, 1964, p. 42.
LES TROIS ANGES
In 2007, Pascal Convert created fourteen stained-glass bay windows for the abbatial church of Saint-Gildas-des-Bois, near Nantes. He was inspired by early 20th-century photographs of children who had been locked up in an asylum. In this unique negative bas-relief piece entitled Les trois anges (2009), Pascal Convert takes the children out of isolation by combining the figures of three girls, initially separated in both the Revue photographique des hôpitaux (1905) and the stained-glass windows of Saint-Gildas-des-Bois..
 
Motionless, barely touching hands, their eyes are closed and yet they seem to be looking at us. One of them appears to want to approach us.
 
"How can these figures be so desperately present when no attempt has been made to create the illusion of opaque bodies, of flesh and bone? Why do they give us such a powerful sense of life? Because, as it seems worth pointing out, it is impossible to believe these children are dead as they stand there, staring at us. They are keeping watch. (...) Our gaze lingers on each one of them. They cause us to wonder, or to daydream. This could be entitled the novel of each face.” Philippe Dagen, Des êtres humains que rien ne peut faire disparaître, in Pascal Convert, Abbatiale de Saint-Gildas-des-bois, Éditions du Patrimoine, 2009.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Pascal CONVERT
FRANCE
 
 

The son of an artist, Pascal Convert was born in 1957 in Mont-de-Marsan. He is a visual artist, writer and director, and defines his work as the archaeology of architecture, childhood, history, the body and time. He uses materials such as glass and wax to evoke the passage of time, light and the lasting effects of the past. In 1987, while he was living in Bordeaux, he covered the wooden panelling in one room of his apartment with plate glass, which formed the first in his series entitled Appartement de l’artiste. In 1989 and 1990 he was resident at the Villa Médicis in Rome, and in 1992 his first major solo exhibition was held at the CAPC (Contemporary Art Museum) in Bordeaux. In 1997 he was invited by the philosopher and art historian Georges Didi-Huberman to take part in the L’Empreinte exhibition at the Centre Pompidou alongside Giuseppe Penone, Man Ray, Alain Fleischer and others. Georges Didi-Huberman would go on to write several books about Convert’s work (published by Éditions de Minuit) and include him in numerous exhibitions. In 2002 he unveiled his memorial to resistance fighters and hostages, the Monument à la mémoire des résistants et otages fusillés au Mont Valérien entre 1941 et 1944 (Mémorial de la France combattante, Suresnes). Opposite the chapel where they were held before they were taken to the place of execution, Pascal Convert erected a 2.7m x 2.18m bronze bell engraved with the names of those who were killed. In 2003, as a continuation of this work, he made a documentary about the victims, Mont Valérien, aux noms des fusillés.

In 2007 his exhibition Lamento at Mudam in Luxembourg featured wax sculptures inspired by iconic press photos: La Pietà du Kosovo (1999-2000), based on a photo taken by Georges Mérillon, La Madone de Bentalha (2001-2002), based on a photo taken by Hocine Zaourar, and La Mort de Mohamed Al Dura (2002-2003), based on stills from a video by Talal Abou Rahmed. These sculptures have been widely exhibited at the United Nations, in Montreal, in Switzerland and in Italy. In the same year, he published a biography of Joseph Epstein, leader of the communist resistance in Paris, who was shot at Mont Valérien in 1944.

In 2008, he completed a set of stained glass windows for the abbey church of Saint Gildas des Bois (Loire-Atlantique). He then exhibited a huge crystal sculpture Le Temps scellé: Joseph Epstein et son fils, in the Force de l’Art exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2009. It is now part of the permanent collection of the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris. He again made a documentary film, Joseph Epstein: bon pour la légende. After four years of work, he published a new biography, Raymond Aubrac: résister, reconstruire, transmettre (Seuil, 2011), and made two documentary films about this leader of the French Resistance. Two years later the autobiographical story La Constellation du Lion (Grasset) was published. In 2014, he took part in the Busan Biennale in South Korea and the group exhibition La Guerre qui vient n’est pas la première: 1914-2014 at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto in Italy.

In 2016, he took part in the interdisciplinary exhibition, Soulèvements, at the Jeu de Paume arts centre. The highlight of that year was an invitation from the French ambassador to Afghanistan to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban. Convert mounted an expedition in association with Iconem, an organisation that specialises in conflict zone archaeology. Using drones, he scanned the whole of the cliff face in Bamiyan to produce images that are now freely available to the global scientific community. Using a high-resolution camera, he made a “photographic impression” of the place where the monumental sculptures were carved about 1,600 years ago.

In 2019, the Éric Dupont Gallery dedicated a solo exhibition entitled Trois Arbres to his work. A piece with birch bark from Crematorium V at Auschwitz-Birkenau, a nuked cherry tree from Hiroshima, and the stone tree of life carvings found on Armenian khachkars.

Other projects are expected for 2021, with a dual exhibition in March of Panoramique de la falaise de Bamiyan, both at the Musée Guimet and the Louvre Lens, and in May the creation of an artwork for the Dôme des Invalides as part of the exhibition Napoléon? Encore. Encore. In the autumn, the Éric Dupont Gallery will hold a solo exhibition entitled Bibliothèque de Confinement, and there will be another project with the Cahn Contemporary Gallery in Basel.

Complete Biography

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2019
Trois arbres, Galerie Éric Dupont, Paris, France
De Lascaux à Bamiyan, Lascaux IV, France
 
2018
Revoir Bamiyan, Musée Guimet, Paris, France
 
2017
Bamiyan, Galerie Éric Dupont, Paris, France
 
2016
Portrait du jeune homme en Saint Denis, Galerie Éric Dupont, Paris, France
 
2014
Passion, Galerie Éric Dupont, Paris, France
 
2011
Histoire-Enfance, Galerie Éric Dupont, Paris, France
 
2009
Joseph Epstein, Galerie Éric Dupont, Paris, France
 
2007
Lament, MUDAM, Luxembourg
 
2002
Native Drawing et Native Movies, Carré Saint Anne et ESBAMA, Montpellier, France
 
2000
Site Odéon 5, Galerie Verney-Carron, Paris, France
Native Drawing, FRAC Picardie, France
Galerie Pietro Sparta, Chagny, France
 
1996
Villa Arson, Nice
Crosby Street Space, New York, USA
Un mur à Marrakech
Le Casino, Musée d’art contemporain, Luxembourg
Galerie Pietro Sparta, Chagny, France
 
1994
Galerie Pietro Sparta, Chagny, France
 
1992
CapcMusée de Bordeaux, France
Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany
1991
Autoportrait, École des Beaux-Arts, Mâcon, France
 
1990
Halle Sud, Geneva, Switzerland
 
1989
Galerie Jean-François Dumont, Bordeaux, France
 
1987
Galerie Jean-François Dumont, Bordeaux, France
 
1986
Galerie Jean-François Dumont, Bordeaux, France
 
1984
Galerie J&J Donguy, Paris, France

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2020
Comme des tourbillons de poussières, Biennale de la Photographie, Mulhouse, France
Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire, Centre for Arts and Nature, Chaumont-sur-Loire, France
Il était une fois dans l’Ouest, exposition inaugurale du FRAC Aquitaine à la MECA, Bordeaux, France
Histoire de l'art cherche personnages, CAPC musée d'art contemporain, Bordeaux, France
 
2018
Débris et collages, LAM, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France
Melancholia, Fondation Boghossian, Brussels, Belgium
Soulèvement, Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, France; Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain; Museo de la Universidad de Tres Ferrero, Bueno Aires, Argentina; MUAC / Museo Universitario Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico, Mexico; Galerie de l’UQUAM, Montreal, Canada
 
2015
Là où commence le jour, LAM, Villeneuve d’Ascq, France
L’effet vertigo, MacVal, Paris, France
 
2014
La guerra che verrà non è la prima 1914 – 2014, MART / Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto, Italy
Trop humain, artistes des XXe et XXIe siècles devant la souffrance, Musée international de la Croix-Rouge et du Croissant-Rouge, Geneva, Switzerland
 
2013
Émoi et moi, MacVal, Paris, France
 
2012
Atlas, Musée Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; Studio National du Fresnoy, France; ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; Fondation Falkenberg Hamburg, Germany; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
 
2009
La force de l’art, Grand Palais, Paris, France
 
2004
Le printemps de septembre, couvent des Jacobins, Toulouse, France
 
2001
Le mois de la photo à Montréal, Galerie de l’UQUAM, Canada
Artiste invité au Studio National du Fresnoy, France
 
2000
Obayashi Corporation, œuvre permanente, Tokyo, Japan
5e Biennale d’art contemporain de Lyon, France
Galerie Pietro Sparta, Chagny, France
 
1998
L’œil et l’esprit, Museum of modern art of Gunma; Iwaki City Museum, Museum of modern art of Wakayama, Japan
 
1997
L’empreinte, Centre Georges Pompidou, France
 
1996
Galerie Pietro Sparta, Chagny, France
Double mixte, Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, France
 
1995
CapcMusée de Bordeaux, France
 
1994
Musée Kouskovo, Moscow, Russia
 
1993
Le génie du Lieu, Rouen, France
 
1990
Villa Médicis hors les murs, Granada, Spain
 
1989
CapcMusée de Bordeaux, France
Villa Médicis, Rome, Italie et FRAC Pays de Loire, France
 
1986
Pascal Convert, Didier Malgor, Musée Bonnat, Bayonne, France
View on the map
Chambre intérieure cristallisée, installation de Pascal Convert pour le Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, 2021 - © Éric Sander
Les trois anges, installation de Pascal Convert pour le Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, 2021 - © Éric Sander
Les trois anges, installation de Pascal Convert pour le Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, 2021 - © Éric Sander
Ticketing Restaurants Practical information Boutiques Press review Espace Presse / Press Groups and Tourism Professionals

The Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire

Aquired by the Centre-Val de Loire Region in 2007, The Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire has become an unmissable site within the spheres of art and gardens. The triple identity of the Domaine : Heritage, art and gardens make for a unique visit within the circuit of the Loire Valley castles

Read more
Regional Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire
41150 Chaumont-sur-Loire
Tel :+33 (0) 2 54 20 99 22
Fax :+33 (0) 2 54 20 99 24

Newsletter

Logo région centre Logo DRAC Logo ACCR Logo Val de Loire - Unesco Logo Loire à vélo Logo jardin remarquable Logo arbre remarquable Logo Qualité tourisme
Contact Regional Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire Partners Legal notices