Mathieu Lehanneur’s liquid marble installation makes a splash in France
![Piece of hand-polished green marble and crafted using 3D software](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/jc8Rmd4KmQyemwwHCqMSaj-415-80.jpg)
With summer just around the corner, we’re already envisioning perfect piscines to dip our toes in. Imagine our surprise when this alluring lagoon, recently unveiled in the centre of a countryside courtyard, turned out not to be a pristine pool, but rather an installation composed of solid green marble by the French designer Mathieu Lehanneur.
Entitled Petite Loire, the most recent addition to his ‘Liquid Marble’ series is on view at the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire Centre D’Arts et de Nature as part of this year’s International Garden Festival. ‘I wanted to address the garden with water as my muse,’ explains Lehanneur. The installation evokes the French river Loire; he explains, ‘It shapes and nourishes the landscape; it passes through without ever pausing along the way. The water whose presence we sense even before we first catch sight of it below the Château, flowing uninterrupted to the sea.’
Comprising a single piece of hand-polished marble and crafted using 3D software, the installation captures the surface of the river, an ephemeral moment of gently rippling water seemingly frozen in time. ‘Petite Loire is a freeze-frame, the river’s perpetual movement caught in a frozen, fossilised moment. A few dozen metres above the river’s natural level, Petite Loire cuts cleanly through the garden’s surface, delving into the soil to reveal a fluvial relief, both vertiginous and practicable, in green marble,’ adds the designer.
It’s a strikingly simple concept but executed with all the sharp-witted elegance we’ve come to expect from Lehanneur. The designer says: ‘I hope that, when passing the Château gates, the visitor will experience something that comes close to a magic portal, to a forbidden place in so many fairytales. Everything is liquid in this space, evanescent, enlightened, and yet it is executed in a material that is the one of the most solid imaginable.’
This year’s festival is subtitled, ‘Gardens From the Coming Century’. If this is the garden of the future, then the future can’t come soon enough.
Comprising a single piece of hand-polished green marble and crafted using 3D software, the installation captures the surface of the river.
The installation evokes its namesake and France's longest river, the Loire.
’I wanted to address the garden with water as my muse,’ explains Lehanneur.
'Petite Loire is a freeze-frame, the river’s perpetual movement caught in a frozen, fossilised moment,' adds the designer. '[It] cuts cleanly through the garden’s surface, delving into the soil to reveal a fluvial relief, both vertiginous and practicable, in green marble.'
INFORMATION
‘Petite Loire’ is on view until 2 November. For more information, visit the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire website
ADDRESS
Domaine Régional de Chaumont-sur-Loire
41150 Chaumont-sur-Loire
France
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
-
Commune’s sustainable personal care products look ‘quite unlike anything else’
Commune’s Somerset-made products stand out in the sustainable skincare crowd. Madeleine Rothery speaks with the brand’s co-founders Kate Neal and Rémi Paringaux
By Madeleine Rothery Published
-
‘Hedonistic and avant-garde’: Rabanne’s Julian Dossena on the legacy of the chainmail 1969 bag
Paco Rabanne’s 1969 chainmail handbag encapsulates the late designer’s futuristic, space-age style. Current creative director Julien Dossena tells Wallpaper* about the bag’s particular pleasures
By Jack Moss Published
-
Postcard from Paris: Olympic fever takes over the streets
On the eve of the opening ceremony of Paris 2024, our correspondent shares her views from the streets of the capital about how the event is impacting the urban landscape.
By Minako Norimatsu Published
-
‘Who has not dreamed of seeing what the eye cannot grasp?’: Rencontres d’Arles comes to the south of France
Les Rencontres d’Arles 2024 presents over 40 exhibitions and nearly 200 artists, and includes the latest iteration of the BMW Art Makers programme
By Sophie Gladstone Published
-
Van Gogh Foundation celebrates ten years with a shape-shifting drone display and The Starry Night
The Van Gogh Foundation presents ‘Van Gogh and the Stars’, anchored by La Nuit Etoilée, which explores representations of the night sky, and the 19th-century fascination with the cosmos
By Amy Serafin Published
-
Harlem-born artist Tschabalala Self’s colourful ode to the landscape of her childhood
Tschabalala Self’s new show at Finland's Espoo Museum of Modern Art evokes memories of her upbringing, in vibrant multi-dimensional vignettes
By Millen Brown-Ewens Published
-
Wanås Konst sculpture park merges art and nature in Sweden
Wanås Konst’s latest exhibition, 'The Ocean in the Forest', unites land and sea with watery-inspired art in the park’s woodland setting
By Alice Godwin Published
-
Marisa Merz’s unseen works at LaM, Lille, have a uniquely feminine spirit
Marisa Merz’s retrospective at LaM, Lille, is a rare showcase of her work, pursuing life’s most fragile, transient details
By Finn Blythe Published
-
Pino Pascali’s brief and brilliant life celebrated at Fondazione Prada
Milan’s Fondazione Prada honours Italian artist Pino Pascali, dedicating four of its expansive main show spaces to an exhibition of his work
By Kasia Maciejowska Published
-
John Cage’s ‘now moments’ inspire Lismore Castle Arts’ group show
Lismore Castle Arts’ ‘Each now, is the time, the space’ takes its title from John Cage, and sees four artists embrace the moment through sculpture and found objects
By Amah-Rose Abrams Published
-
Gerhard Richter unveils new sculpture at Serpentine South
Gerhard Richter revisits themes of pattern and repetition in ‘Strip-Tower’ at London’s Serpentine South
By Hannah Silver Published