In anticipation of the white season, while the trees are covered with gold leaf, the groves of the gardens of Versailles welcome an astonishing fauna. With Voyage d'hiver, sixteen groves are invested, until early January, by big names of the contemporary art scene.
For the tenth consecutive year, the gardens of Versailles welcome contemporary art. After Jeff Koons, Murakami Takashi and so many other renowned contemporary artists, this year, a small novelty, not only the exhibition takes place in autumn and not in summer, but in addition, several artists are invited under the curatorship of the Palais de Tokyo. Coming from all horizons, known or not, they offer us a varied vision of the current contemporary realization in dialogue with the old works.
Between textiles, sculptures, paintings and sound installations, the impermanence, transformation and transience of sometimes ephemeral works respond to the changes of seasons and the timelessness of multi-secular groves, pulling the place out of its winter torpor. Indeed, while the great musical waters have just fallen silent, the statues are gradually covered with a wintering veil and the groves enter hibernation. But not this year!
The Winter Travel route thus created, tells a story and invites you to a journey out of time. The surprise is at the rendezvous at every turn of the alleys, as in the time of Louis XIV. The groves thus find their vocation as a place of wandering and surprise with chimeras and animals sometimes fairy and sometimes more disturbing.
For mediation, a bi-lingual panel is hung at the entrance of each grove, cartels accompany certain works, site plans make it possible to find your way around this plant labirynth and finally an application is available for download.
Each work is also linked to the others, via an eponymous fiction text by Céline Minard available from Flammarion editions. This is the 17th work related to the exhibition.
Undoubtedly, some works destabilize, others enchant, but isn't this the role of art to question our perceptions, our senses and our tastes?
In any case, this refreshing exhibition, in every sense of the word, deserves to be seen for two reasons: for his works, whose evolution will be made according to the weather, and for the colors of the garden in the cold season.
