Environments, Domaine de Chamarande

With : Brandon Ballengée, solo exhibition at the castle
Bruit du Frigo, Gilles Bruni, Christophe Clottes, Olivier Darné, Nicolas Floc’h, Étienne de France, Camille Goujon, Suzanne Husky, Nicolas Milhé, Liliana Motta, Laurent Tixador, productions for the Domaine dans le parc
Frank Smith, with the Soundwalk Collective at the Orangery Museum of Thoughts

Associate curator at the Domaine départemental de Chamarande, COAL

The artists have imagined open-air installations, on the scale of the place, encouraging encounters, discovery and shared experiences. The Domaine is thus transformed into a real space of observation and interaction with nature where visitors can experience new ways of inhabiting their environment and living together.

The environment is the intermediary between man and nature. It is what we perceive of the environment that surrounds us, at our scale and according to our units of measurement. The development of an ecological consciousness and culture has profoundly changed our relationship with the different environments. Chamarande embodies this transition of our perception, at the crossroads of cultural and biological evolution. This is evidenced by the evolution of its representations: Chamarande was yesterday a landscape built and fantasized by Hubert Robert, and today a Natural Zone of Ecological, Faunistic and Floristic Interest (ZNIEFF II) which benefits from a “differentiated management plan”, that is to say a more reasoned and ecological management of the maintenance of its 98 hectares of natural and landscape environments .

How do these different human perceptions of the environment now coexist? How have they evolved with our cultural and scientific projections?
How to observe and interact with your environment? How do you move from one environment to another? How to live differently in a forest, a meadow, an island or a suburban area?
These are the questions that the exhibition Milieux proposes to put into perspective.

The artists are invited to become fully involved in the management of the park, with a prospective vision of the evolution of the environment: they will offer a singular and innovative look at the way we perceive, inhabit and manage these natural and cultural spaces. Their original productions will reveal to the public the natural vitality of all the environments of the Domaine.
Whether it is the creation of an ideal city, an economy based on foraging bees, a garden of the future, or a rotting bin, all these works will question the memory of places, a model of society or an alternative management of the environment.

As for the castle, it will be occupied by the American artist Brandon Ballengée for his first solo exhibition in France, which follows his residency during the summer of 2012 at the Domaine de Chamarande. He will present his work on the transformations of the living caused by the interventions of Man on the natural environments , and more specifically a series of works on amphibians.

In this journey from work to work, from milieu to milieu, the public will experience the particularity of the milieu: there is no border, it is a passage. The edge of the forest is an environment in itself while being the transition from grassland to forest. At the Domaine de Chamarande, a passage from the world of art to the world of nature, a bridge between rural and urban, we are in the middle and in the heart of the exploration.

Between wonder and responsibility, the exhibition will allow visitors to no longer simply observe nature from a distance, but to integrate it into the scale of the Domaine, to question the preservation and sharing of our living environments , to become true co-owners of the site. To share these experiences, the exhibition will also be punctuated by high points, exchanges with the public, events, meetings and debates, workshops and thematic brunches. One more step towards the definition of a sustainable culture to live together on the Chamarande Estate.

MEDIA, FROM MAY 26 TO SEPTEMBER 30, 2013
Exhibitions at the castle, in the park and in the orangery
Opening on Sunday, May 26th at the castle from 3pm