2009 art season

The Domain of Chaumont sur Loire, the first “Centre d’Arts et de Nature ”, welcomes twelve new artists, visual artists and photographers in 2009.

Nils-Udo, a major artist of our time, who introduced nature to the centre of the artistic scene and François Méchain, known for his subtle plant architecture, presents unusual installations in the Historic Grounds, strong poetic interrogations of the threats that hang over our natural environment. Gulliver’s forest by Nils-Udo, a work that plays on the infinitely large and the infinitely small, as well as L’arbre aux couteaux and L’arbre aux échelles by François Méchain are metaphors for the splendour and damage to our forest. With Pittoresque Dimitri Xenakis and Maro Avrabou have designed a series of framed, see-through paintings for the Historic Grounds, which show the Château through out-of-scale images of flowers. 

Following on from works by Gursky and Alex MacLean, the Château's Gallery host photographs by Nils-Udo and Rodney Graham, whilst the new Stable Gallery host images by Jacqueline Salmon in La racine des legumes. The Domain also host, in the Donkey Stables, photographs by Jean-Louis Elzeard (Ce printemps, le printemps encore réinventera les prés and Reconnaissance de la rivière) and Guillaume Viaud.

To echo the theme of the Garden Festival, which, this year, focuses on colour, in the Fenil Gallery, Daniel Walravens presents De vert en vert, a strict variation of approximately fifty paintings which explore all the potential colours of green, whilst Deidi von Schaewen shows the sumptuous polychromy of her Abres sacrés and Luzia Simons shows her Scannogrammes of giant tulips in the new area, the Bee Barn. 

Finally, it should be noted that until december 2010, the Château host, in an area of approximately of 600  square metres, work by Jannis Kounellis, a key figure of Arte Povera, in a framework of an exceptional order by the Centre Region for the Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire.