Chateau of Chaumont and the Festival des Jardins

To finish up my time at the Festival, here are my favorite pieces of indoor art.

This work is described as a forest of bells and timber, a powerful and spectacular work where the artist expresses his wish to wake up a sleeping chateau, each bell appearing, according to Kounellis, as a mouth letting escape a cry in reference to the work of Edvard Munch.

Brazilian artist Oliveira is a painter and sculptor who works with a material considered to be of an inferior quality: plywood. The work is described as quasi-alive, bursting literally from the stone walls. The wood spirals across the room’s frame to the stairway, like an immense snake or a root buried over the centuries in the stone, suddenly erupting into uncontrolled growth.

This last installation was my favorite piece of art next to El Anatsui’s. In this case the artist is a team who has been developing projects in situ or on site since 1997. Their work is ephemeral, progressive, and profuse. This piece displayed in the chateau’s chapel was impossible to photograph in its entirety, so I have included all of the images I took as I looked down from the balcony.

This work is described as one of grace and poetry. The team used a variety of plant life: leaves, grasses, and dried flowers harvested from the chateau’s gardens, suspending them in space in a dreamlike scene, while playing with light and architecture.