2020 Art season

Get ready for a refreshingly new experience amidst the green utopia of the Domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire with its 2020 Art Season! Like every year, fifteen or so new artists will be imbuing the Domaine's château and grounds with the grace and subtlety of their creative worlds. Joël Andrianomearisoa, for example, will be beckoning us on a poetic meditation about night and day in a series of spaces in the Farmyard, with an altogether spell-binding installation. Two sculptures by Giuseppe Penone will be urging us to "breathe the shadow" and transcend appearances, while the artist's sublime, newly exhibited drawings in the château will reveal his obsessive relationship with trees and branches.

 

As part of his exhibition Paysages révélés, the painter Philippe Cognée will be showcasing some thirty large-format canvases in the South and West wings of the Château, evoking the vibrant splendour of thick forests and sweeping fields of wilderness or crops.

Still taking a leaf from nature, libraries, herbariums and collections are set to feature prominently in the 2020 programme: the Château's library is poised to display Pascal Convert's unsettling crystallised books while visitors touring the Historic Grounds will be struck by the powerful reminiscent force of his black stumps dotted around it.

 

Make time, too, to linger in admiration before the effortlessly simple, self-evident masterpieces of nature magnified by Marinette Cueco's fantastic herbariums, or the library of plant wonders by Japanese artist Makoto Azuma. Isa Barbier's imaginative feathers, Sophie Lavaux' elegant ceramics and Léa Barbazanges' exquisite crystal pieces will be brightening up the Château depths and Bee Barn with their dazzling white translucency.

 

Meanwhile, Bob Verschueren's installation L’arbre de Vie, Marc Nucera's organic creations, Vincent Barré's Couronnes d’arbres, Wang Keping's Oiseaux and Axel Cassel's Fumées among other works are going to enhance the Château's parkland and outbuildings in celebration of nature's infinite diversity of forms, materials and possibilities. Whether eminent or emerging, the artists of Chaumont-sur-Loire's 2020 Art Season will all share with us the quivering delicacy of rare yet necessary emotions stirred up by their carefully woven link with their surroundings.