Les Extatiques is a summer contemporary art exhibition initiated by Paris La Défense and the Hauts-de-Seine Department. For the fourth edition, the theme highlighted is ecstasy. The artistic route goes from the Esplanade de La Défense to the Arche, and extends for the first time, this year, to the gardens of La Seine Musicale, in Boulogne-Billancourt. A route to discover until October 3rd.
Les Extatiques : a valorization project
La Défense, symbol par excellence of the business world, is a district that is part of a development project. The aim of this cultural policy is to extend art beyond its traditional spaces. Thus, at the turn of these towers with singular architecture, it is an entire open-air museum that is offered to us. We can already observe sixty-nine perennial works that Justfocus has already briefly presented in this article. In addition, ephemeral works presented by the Les Extatiques festival every year. Through the various artistic installations, Les Extatiques truly participates in the project of "rebirth" of the district of La Défense.
Initiated in 2018, the first edition of Les Extatiques aimed to celebrate the sixty years of the district. A real success, the festival has become an unmissable event for artists, tourists, locals, art lovers, strollers and even La Défense employees. The festival is intended for a very varied audience that is not necessarily used to going to museums and galleries to discover contemporary art. This open-air exhibition starts from the Takis Basin and extends to the Agam Fountain. To explore it, simply let yourself be carried away by the various installations that subtly follow a green line drawn on the ground, like the green line of the Voyage à Nantes. Always on the ground, an explanatory cartel accompanies each work in order to understand the artist's approach and his work.
Support for artistic creation
Installing works of art in the heart of La Défense is not only part of a process of enhancing the district, but also helps to support artistic creation. By making the festival Les Extatiques an annual event, Paris and the department reaffirm their desire to support well-known and emerging artists. Thus, the festival brings together artists from different backgrounds and disciplines. Artists, chefs, designers and dancers mingle. This approach is all the more important as it follows a context of health crisis that has paralyzed the world of culture.
This year, Tony Cragg, Alain Passard, Cyril Lancelin, Luka Fineisen, Johan Creten, Jean-Fançois Fourtou, Daniel Arsham, Jean-Bernard Métais, Lilian Bourgeat, Nils-Udo, Noël Dolla and many others are invited. These French and international artists create new works aimed at shaking up our gaze and our vision of the world.
The theme of ecstasy
Each year, the festival revolves around a particular theme. Thus, this new edition develops as a common thread, ecstasy. Ecstasy in the sense of revelation. Fabrice Bousteau, editor-in-chief of Beaux-Arts magazine, curator and artistic director of the exhibition then states that:
"We returned to the very essence of the word ecstatic, its origins: Ecstasy. It is not about ecstasy as a "mystical" notion or as a "second state of trance" but rather as a way of looking differently, towards oneself and the world. At a time when we are faced with the urgency of acting on global issues, how much time do we give to moments of ecstasy? How can the public find a state of ecstasy, an emotion or a moment of questioning in front of a work? This exhibition shows the intensity and atmosphere of ecstasy experiences. How to consciously cross physical, emotional and mental boundaries. »
The theme of ecstasy is particularly highlighted in an installation of the route: The exhibition in the exhibition – Ecstasy. This singular and original installation is similar to a small exhibition of reproductions of emblematic works of art history that creates a dialogue between historical and contemporary works. The reproductions are presented on old JCDecaux billboards. Thus, we find, for example, the poem L'ecstase by Paul Elouard, photographs by Sylvie Lancrenon (2019), a detail of an Attic amphora with a red figure by Python (painter), representing a dancing Maenad (around 330-320 BC), The kiss by Gustave Klimt (1907-1908).
This mise en abyme revolves around ecstasy through the world of dance, because to quote Isodora Duncan, from the exhibition: "Dance is the Dionysian ecstasy that turns everything upside down". The goal is both to present a narrative and explanatory context to the works of the tour, but also to provide an anchoring to the visitor in order to leave him free in the representation and appropriation of the works in situ.
Immersive works
In the course of the Extatics, there are works that invite walkers to become one with them. In situ installations that seek above all to surprise. Through an immersive experience, they tend to upset our relationship with the world. This is the case of Cyril Lancelin's installation Cube Sphere Gold (2021). It is a cubic sculpture made from an assembly of regular and reflective metal spheres. Inscribed in the historical axis of Paris La Défense, the work echoes the shape of the Arc de Triomphe and the Arche de La Défense. The cube perpetuates the idea of a passage, inviting visitors to walk through the work. The artist creates a dialogue between the infinitely small and the infinitely large, the human scale with the scale of the city, the void with the full. Thanks to this passage, he invites us to immerse ourselves in matter.
La maison couchée (2021) by Jean-François Fourtou is a work that also invites walkers to live an immersive experience. As its name suggests, the work presents a typical house of the Paris region, lying on one side. Inside, the visitor sees through the windows that the furniture defies the laws of gravity. The artist also tends to upset our relationship with the world. Indeed, it seeks to break the monotony of the urban landscape by creating an element of surprise. From then on, the house – ordinary element par excellence – becomes original.
Located on the Place Rodin de La Seine Musicale in Boulogne-Billancourt, Jean-Bernard Métais is also part of the same approach. It is a set of seven pieces of perforated metal and arranged in staggered patterns. The installation is a sculptural journey where each device functions as a filter in the landscape. Like monolithic, the works change aspects according to our point of view. From a distance, they appear at first glance dark and massive and when we approach them, they lighten visually.
This optical effect is possible thanks to the use of a semi-transparent mesh, disturbing our gaze. The artist's work invites you to wander around to create an immersive, sensory and poetic experience. Circulating in these sensory chambers, the visitor is confronted with a reality that seems to be slowly wavering.
A journey as close as possible to nature
Beyond these immersive experiences, Les Extatiques seeks to bring the walker closer to nature. We find on both sides of the route works that echo the fauna and flora. Zadok Ben-David's Early Spring (2021) highlights the relationship between man and nature. For the festival, the artist creates a human tree in cut-out metal where human forms merge with leaves. It is about the cycle of the seasons, a topos to symbolize life and the universe. His first human tree was made in 2003 to pay tribute to the resistance fighters of the Second World War.
NILS-UDO's work is also inspired by nature through ephemeral installations. Influenced by land art, the artist speaks of this essential and universal nature, stripped of all human traces. Flower (2021) consists of soil, wicker and branches planted in the grass. Through a play of perspectives, the work then forms large flower petals sheltering in its heart seeds, represented by small wicker stems.
References to art history
The last work that closes the tour is the work of Daniel Arsham. The work of this American artist unfolds through different mediums: sculpture, architecture, painting or video. In a uchronic aesthetic, he then develops a concept of fictitious archaeology that breaks the boundary between past and present. For Les Extatiques, the work produced perfectly testifies to his approach. Entitled Eroded Bust of Zeus (2020), it depicts the mythological god Zeus, inspired by ancient Roman marbles. It also echoes a marble from the second century BC. J-C, belonging to the collection of the Louvre Museum. Known as "The Jupiter of Versailles", it was restored in the seventeenth century. Through his work, the artist questions the history of art, between heritage and filiation.
Daniel Arsham's sculptures are often inlaid with geological materials such as blue calcite, quartz or bronze. Here, these erosions crystallized on the surface are polished stainless steel crystals. Thus, in a poetic way, the artist transgresses the status of a work of art by shaking up the boundary between past, present and future. This temporal dialogue then promotes the collective imagination.
A poetic journey to marvel
The Les Extatiques festival is also a way to bring a little poetry to the heart of La Défense, creating an effect of contrast with the urban space. And if there is one work that fascinates and attracts walkers, it is the work of the American artist Luka Finersen. The work Awakeing (2021) is like an aquarium that contains a multitude of white feathers. Cyclically and randomly, a breath propels these feathers making this aquarium, a kind of gigantic snow globe. The imagination is at the heart of this work. A true poetic and playful invitation, it creates a remarkable contrast between the transparent glass with an industrial look, the fragility of the pen and the surrounding architecture. This contrast is also accentuated by its placement within the historic axis of Paris La Défense. Both gentle and violent, the movement of feathers breathes new energy into the city.
Les Extatiques offers us on two different but complementary sites, fourteen works, which bring to the city a poetic touch. These immersive interventions then re-enchant our daily lives, often monotonous, by renewing the way we look at urban space. See the city through a new angle. At the heart of this dialogue between art and the city, Les Extatiques aims to introduce contemporary art to passers-by while raising their awareness of major current issues such as our relationship to the world, nature, ecology…
