This text is part of the special book Plaisirs
Impossible not to smile. One foot on the pedestal, the other in the void, the character in a suit seems to taunt passers-by, Place du Bouffay. baptized Praise of the side step, the statue of Philippe Ramette is undoubtedly one of the works that best defines Le voyage à Nantes, a summer event presenting a unique collection of more than 100 works of art in the public space which will inaugurate its 11e edition on July 2.
Nantes is not a city: it is an open-air setting. Its treasures are revealed to anyone who knows how to see beyond the first glance. It must be said that the expression “to reinvent itself”, the third largest metropolis in France by its demographic growth, was forced to make it its mantra long before the pandemic. After the closure of the shipyards in 1987, art gradually imposed itself to imagine the future.
More than three decades later, public spaces proudly display the audacity of creators. Events multiplied. In the street as in museums, Nantes residents seem crazy about their city. They are the first to storm the factories and warehouses converted into cultural venues.
Still humor?
Since 2012, Le voyage à Nantes has had fun blurring landmarks, shifting perceptions and questioning the link between art and the world. This unique urban art trail is enriched every year with new creations, during the summer event. “Every summer, we look forward to discovering new works,” says blogger Adeline Gressin, who left Paris for Nantes in 2018.
Traced on the ground, a green line becomes the common thread of the promenade. In the Cours Cambronne, one wonders if the schoolgirl fromPraise of transgression, also imagined by Philippe Ramette, is in the process of climbing onto the empty plinth or descending from it. In the Jardin des Plantes, The giant bench by Claude Ponti gives us the impression that we have joined the world of ants.
The game of illusions
On the Sainte-Anne hill, near the Jules Verne museum, the Hermitage Belvedere, by Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata, frames the sky and the river. It only takes a few steps to see the Loire and the island of Nantes appear.
Under a removable architecture designed from agricultural greenhouses, the Cantine du Voyage welcomes both strollers and the hungry in a decor signed by the Nantes collective call me daddy. Near the kitchen garden of the Canteen, we discover huge rain boots that could belong to a potential occupant of the bench of the Jardin des Plantes. However, it is not their size that is most surprising, but the fact that they are both left-footed. Unveiled in 2020, the boots are three meters high and have a size… 2000. “It’s called Unsold, by Lilian Bourgeat, explains Bénédicte Péchereau, in charge of international promotion. As it is the same foot, we cannot sell them! Immediately, the scenario machine starts up.
This is precisely where the magic of Nantes lies: in the traces it leaves days, weeks, months after you have surveyed it. We remember the crazy stories we were told as much as those invented as we discover them. And we, more than ever, want to take a step aside too.
Convert an old chapel
Our collaborator was the guest of the event Le Voyage à Nantes, which had no right to inspect this text.