Vue d’exposition | Installation view The God-Trick, PAV Parco Arte Vivente, Turin/IT, 2018. Courtesy PAV, Turin. Photo : Filippo Alfero
Covering 10 hectares, the Hangar Y park has a rich history: designed in the 17th century by André Le Nôtre, it was once part of the gardens of the Château de Meudon. To this day, it offers a peaceful setting where the exhibited works — often poetic and unexpected — engage in harmonious dialogue with the natural ecosystems and the history of Hangar Y.
A new trail, bringing together nearly 25 contemporary works, has been conceived to encourage interaction with the public. It weaves together art and nature, interactivity and enchantment, bringing the magic of the site to life through the eyes of its artists. Visitors will discover Pablo Reinoso’s enchanted bench, Mark Dion’s cabinet of curiosities, and Subodh Gupta’s strange house made of hundreds of cooking pots, alongside architectural and design works appearing for the first time, by Odile Decq and Kengo Kuma. Each piece is an invitation to daydream, blending poetry and wonder, sparking the imagination and playing with the fantastical.
Each year, an emerging artist will be invited to engage in dialogue with these major names in contemporary art. This year, the invitation goes to Pauline Tralongo, who presents her large-scale ladders, conceived as a poetic flight towards the sky.
Forêt de balais (Forest of Brooms) is a work conceived in 2013 by Michel Blazy, presented notably at the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire and later at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017.
Hundreds of brooms made from sorghum straw, carrying sorghum seeds within them, are planted directly into the ground, as if taking root. This simple gesture sets off an irreversible process: surrendered to the rhythms of natural germination, the work evolves and transforms throughout the course of the exhibition. As the shoots develop, they literally breathe new life into the brooms, and the sorghum once again becomes a garden.
The trivial everyday object — equally the domain of the witch and the housekeeper, made of wood and straw — is thus returned to a hypothetical state of nature, as though this fragment torn from the meadows had finally found its way back to its origins. Michel Blazy allows the work to experience time, while freeing it from the artistic gesture itself and relinquishing any attempt to control it. Germination and chance become the true co-authors of the piece, embodying the founding principle of the artist’s entire practice: to provide an initial impulse, then let the living world do the rest.