The first edition of « Géométrie Variable » takes place in the park of the Domaine Les Crayères, a landscaped garden created in 1880 by Edouard André for Madame Pommery. A stroll inspired by the venue and the works by Franziska Furter, Shqipe Gashi, Dominique Ghesquière, Louise Hervé & Chloé Maillet, Erika Hock, Kristof Kintera, La Ville Rayée, Guillaume Leingre, Soshi Matsunobe, Mathieu Mercier,
Sandrine Pelletier, Aurélie Pétrel, Christian Sampson, Élodie Seguin, Koki Tanaka, Morgane Tschiember and LG Williams / Estate of LG Williams, « Géométrie Variable » fits into the geography, the history and the culture of Reims. An ornamental landscape, built for a mansion, a family, at the heart of a town that has been, throughout its history, destroyed, rebuilt and reinterpreted. The landscape of a garden designed, devised, altered, damaged, worked as an echo to the Japanese concept of shakkei. The Saint Remi basilica in the distance, the outline of the Domaine Pommery are elements of its lexicon of forms. This garden is the extension (constantly being recomposed) of a spatial geometry as well as a social and cultural geometry, both subject to an infinity of variables. A vast circular area surrounded by groves, concealing in turn a bridge, a grotto, a bunker and a tennis court, reminiscent of the final scene of Antonioni‘s « Blow up ». Works conceived, realized or reactivated for the occasion thus hinge on notions of viewpoint and of architecture, of geometry, construction, perspective, perception of space and perception of time. The landscaped garden is a metaphor of the road travelled or yet to trodden. A place in which to lose oneself and in which to wound up amidst a constant turmoil of movement and renewal of shapes, perspectives and convergence lines. A place of retreat, of listening, of oblivion, of encounters, of awareness. An exercise in collective composition, an intuitive, logical and sensitive surface, « Géométrie Variable » is a material brought to life by its landscape and its romantic acceptance. The project, considered by the artists to be a territory offers up a cartography of interventions, from architecture to sculpture, including performance, photography, writing and sound. As many landscapes, which constitute through a play on proximity contrasts, additions, associations, juxtapositions, superimpositions, concealments, frictions, dissolutions, a geometrically variable ecosystem. A continuous work process and a topographical experience in which typology, context, presence issues take shape around selected works, specific productions, research, reactivations or actions. Some pieces will be recurrent such as those by Morgane Tschiember, while others will evolve or disappear naturally like Koki Tanaka’s « Gum Monsters » and Soshi Matsunobe’s « Stones », with others yet, by Louise Hervé & Chloé Maillet or Guillaume Leingre, only appearing temporarily. Envisaging the garden as a mental landscape, both a prism and filter, the works constitute as many tools to broach, construe, appropriate, comprehend. The encounter and the surprise command attention, instil doubt in and impress one’s memory through the fragmentation, simultaneity and resonance. In our mind arises a constantly reconfigured, unique and individual mosaic of correspondences and dynamic representations, of memories, feelings, emotions, information, events, opinions, enigmas, dreams...
Shut your eyes and call to mind a landscape you are familiar with. Slowly wonder through it once..., then twice...
Baron Osuna / Curator of Géométrie Variable
