An estuary in the form of an artery gallery
About the monumental sculptures sown from Nantes to Saint-Nazaire and the Voyage à Nantes, the summer edition of which runs until 11 September.
All along the Loire estuary, from Nantes to Saint-Nazaire, it is not only the sunsets and panoramic landscapes that take your breath away. Since 2007 and the first Estuaire summer biennial of contemporary art, monumental sculptures have been flourishing here. Many contemporary artists, such as Daniel Dewar and Grégory Gicquel, Huang Yong Ping, Erwin Wurm, Jean-Luc Courcoult, Nathalie Talec, Tadashi Kawamata or Daniel Buren have been invited to place their works of art here, like bridges suspended between dream and reality. Between the city and nature. Between the land and the ocean.
From now on, a cruise is offered during the summer edition of Voyage à Nantes to discover them along the 60 km of riverbanks that link Nantes to Saint-Nazaire, but everyone can also, at their own pace and all year round, on foot, by car or by bike, visit this incredible permanent collection of 33 works of contemporary art that speak to our guts and dreams.
Of course, it is impossible to mention all the art commissions launched by Voyage à Nantes, the structure directed by Jean Blaise. Since 2012, this permanent artistic journey, which is enriched each summer with new exhibitions in new districts, has brought more and more artists into contact with the public space. From the gigantic blue grid erected by François Morellet in front of the Hôtel de Région to the two white faces by Nathalie Talec in the Création district, via the abandoned car park on rue Bias which this year is being repainted in four different greens by Krijn de Koning, or the Talensac market which is home to the automatons created by Gavin Pryke in 2015 for rue Maréchal-Joffre, the prefecture of the Pays de la Loire region has become an extraordinary open-air art gallery.
A good hundred works of art can now be seen along a twenty-kilometre-long permanent route to enhance the historical and cultural heritage of the city of Nantes. Just follow a green line drawn on the ground in the heart of the city so as not to miss anything during the Voyage à Nantes: the cultural stages, the main monuments, the works of art signed by major contemporary artists, a historic alleyway or remarkable architecture... In Nantes, art is in the street. And for its 11th summer edition, which runs from 2 July to 11 September, the event is obviously extending its famous green line. With notably the decorations of Alexandre Benjamin Navet on the Place du Commerce, and those of Hélène Delprat between the Place Graslin and the Place Félix-Fournier. Not forgetting indoor exhibitions such as Angela Bulloch's exhibition at the Musée d'Arts, made up of sculptures, installations and digital creation, to be seen until 30 August, or Charles Fréger's photographs installed at the Château des Ducs de Bretagne until 27 November.
Pascal Convert is doubly invited to the Voyage à Nantes this year. Born in 1957 in Mont-de-Marsan, the visual artist, writer and director is particularly interested in imprints, shadowy areas and traces of history. He describes his work as "the archaeology of architecture, history, the body and time", and uses materials such as glass and wax to better evoke the passage of time, light and the lingering effects of the past. Anyone who has seen his three angels and, above all, his petrified books in the library of the Princess de Broglie at the Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire will never forget them. For this 11th Voyage à Nantes, Pascal Convert is exhibiting in the Passage Sainte-Croix, where wax bells stand next to engraved Armenian crosses. And on glass slabs in the Misericorde cemetery, as if impregnated with a stag, a doe and fawns, he creates with master glass artist Olivier Juteau a moving memento mori called "Mirror of the times".
At the gates of Nantes, near the famous "Lunar Tree", this sculpture in the shape of a white tree imagined by Petra Mrzyk and Jean-François Moriceau, dominating the cliff of the Butte Sainte-Anne from the top of its 12 m and whose luminous halo has been rising from each dead branch since 2012, it is the Japanese Tadashi Kawamata who has erected the "Belvédère de L'Hermitage" in 2019. Clinging to the top of a cliff overlooking the road to the former Misery quarry and the Bas-Chantenay district, where bars and other party venues are now located, this lookout, made up of a clever assembly of salvaged planks, offers both a wooden nest and an unobstructed view over the Loire. As Guy Boyer points out in his article for Connaissance des arts published this summer, you can see from here the Hangar à bananes, which this summer will feature a vast installation by the German artist Michael Beutler, as well as the western tip of the Ile de Nantes, where Atelier Vecteur is transforming a former railway company with a curved footbridge made of wooden slats and plant trellises.
Once you have travelled around Nantes, you have to go downstream to be fascinated by a strange boat that seems to leap like a dolphin. In 2007, Erwin Wurm was inspired to create a poetic sculpture of a soft boat in the lock of the Canal de la Martinière (or Lower Loire maritime canal), which was inaugurated in 1892 after ten years of work and was never really used except as a graveyard for the last great French sailing ships. A stranded sailboat that seems to be contorting itself to set sail. In creating "Misconceivable" for the Estuary Biennial that year, the Austrian artist finally adapted his famous "One Minute Sculptures" to an object, where spectators are asked to assume absurd and complex poses. It is magical.
And then in Couëron, from the shore, you should not think you are crazy when you see a house floating on the Loire. Initially set up between Lavau and Frossay, but moved by the river's current which turned it upside down, "La Maison dans la Loire" was born from the imagination of Jean-Luc Courcoult, one of the co-founders of the Royal de Luxe company and the Machines de l'île de Nantes. Also created as part of the Estuaire contemporary art biennial, this impressive copy of the bar-crêperie La Maison du port is a magnificent invitation to dream of new horizons.
Don't miss the low tide in Saint-Brévin either, to see Huang Yong Ping's immense "Serpent d'océan" (Ocean Snake), a superb chimera opening its mouth wide to express the extinction of species and the threat of climate change. Nor "The Foot, the Pull-Over and the Digestive System", a work in three monumental and surrealist sculptures by Daniel Dewar and Grégory Gicquel which invaded the beach of the Saint-Nazaire outer harbour, like an immense exploded body.