MAISON LOUIS CARRÉ
by architect Alvar Aalto
(Bazoches-sur-Guyonne) FRANCE
Curator : Asdis Olasdottir
Exhibition of light works
25 September – 27 November 2022
The sliding of light takes place from the outside towards the inside and vice versa. This shift causes the curve of the ceiling in the entrance hall to move towards the living room in a brilliant wave that slopes towards the floor. Day and night, the spaces of the house are invented differently in several in situ installations creating new densities and a dematerialization at the limits, on the bay windows, as well as within the rooms in an escape of bearings. At the same time, the chromatic and luminous reflections of the works (light and glass sculptures, photographs and other mediums) act on the objects, the spaces, the in-betweens and renew their organic and sensitive sensations, like an entry into the future.
The light shifts from the outside to the inside and back again. This shift causes the curve of the vast ceiling in the entrance of the house to move towards the living room in a brilliant wave that slides towards the ground. By day and by night, the spaces of the house are invented differently in a work of installations in situ creating new densities and a dematerialization located at the limits, on the bay windows, as well as within the rooms in a flight of reference points.
Solar fiction
The site specific installations create a fluidity in the site allowing us, in particular, to contemplate the surrounding landscape in a different way, which appears as a solar fiction. Inside, the entrance hall-gallery of the house becomes a work of art with the creation of a wave, responding to the undulating ceiling.
Substance
Attracting a tension, coming from one side of these hemispheric-bottomed sculptures to the other, the oblong and shiny shape and the visible bi-chromatia, highlighting the two-part composition, evoke the galenic shape of a capsule. The scale chosen to create the Substance series allows the eye to dive into the matter and colours of the sculptures and to dissolve into the chromatic radiances. When the retina is delighted, Plato gives to the Greek word for colour “pharmakon” the meaning of “remedy”, granting it curative potency.
Mirage
The monumental carpet ‘Mirage’, made by the Manufacture nationale de la Savonnerie in Lodève, based on the work of Nathalie Junod Ponsard commissioned by the Mobilier national, is presented to the public for the first time.
With the complicity of the Galerie Baudoin Lebon and the support of the Finnish Embassy and Hiscox.
Maison Louis Carré by Alvar Aalto
A HOME OF ART
Maison Louis Carré was designed as a permanent residence and to put on display its owner’s fabulous collection of modern art. Paintings by Léger, Bonnard, Picasso, Dufy, Villon, Lanskoy and Klee, sculpture by Henri Laurens, Calder and Alberto Giacometti as well as African art ornated the house. Artists, writers, clients and friends were invited to the villa and the house’s guest books show the quality of the social and cultural life lead in this brilliant home. Maison Louis Carré is the fruit of the encounter between two exceptional personalities and two cultures. The result is a building that perfectly integrates the spatial and formal qualities of Alvar Aalto’s architecture to the French landscape and lifestyle. Alvar Aalto’s persistence in designing everything, from the door handles and the furniture to the entrance gate, the garden and the swimming pool, results in a global work of art.