Mexceptional events in an exceptional location in Périgueux (Dordogne). For its biannual exhibition, the association organizing cultural events has chosen the former Banque de France, apparently the largest of the Banques de France. This is where it will welcome, starting this Friday, June 28 at 2 p.m., six artists of the material, “who have never been seen here and who exhibit in the four corners of the planet.” An experience that promises to be sensory.
Helene Rietsch
The exhibition is located in the former Banque de France, closed in 2022. Here are the changing rooms, which will host an installation by Xavier Le Normand.
Stéphane Klein / SO
To be discovered in the basement of the former bank, glass transformed into precious stone by Xavier Le Normand.
Stéphane Klein / SO
Catia Esteves and her sculpted lines. The artist presents “Before, together and after”, an enchanted tale, in the former boudoir of the Bank.
Sensory
Stéphane Klein / SO
Pebbles or witches’ mirrors, signed Xavier Le Normand.
“The exhibition only lasts two and a half days, that’s on purpose (1). Either you’re there or you miss the event. The best thing is to be there anyway,” smiles Nathalie Legrand, a bookbinder in Périgueux, who organized the event with Philippe Glémet, a restorer of antique furniture and a painter.
Stéphane Klein / SO
Japanese Miki Nakamura, based in Paris, uses cooked and bleached mulberry fiber before it is reduced to pulp.
After the Hôtel Brou de Laurière and the Hôtel Estignard, it is the former heritage fortress, built in 1878 and closed in 2022, which serves as a showcase for artists. “It looks like an island in the city center of Périgueux, surrounded by greenery. Between the three places Plumancy, Magne and Roosevelt, this building is one of a kind,” appreciates Philippe Glémet. As soon as you enter, a page of history opens for those who knew it when it was teeming with employees. And for others, a movie set, almost empty, but which has kept the memory of its gleaming safes.
“I like this atypical place, this room with raw walls that contrast with my pop-colored pebbles,” appreciates Xavier Le Normand, 46, sculptor and glass artist, winner of the 2009 Bettencourt Prize in the Exceptional Talents category. In the basement, he presents luminous glass works, often inspired by the seabed or the cosmos. “When you light it, you are in another world, the ultraviolet reacts with the uranium and it becomes phosphorescent,” says the artist, happy to find Périgueux again. “I spent my adolescence there. Since then, I have exhibited in many countries, but never here, it’s a first,” says Xavier Le Normand, who recently moved to Lanouaille.
A journey “of all materials and in all directions”
What do all the artists on display have in common? “Offering the evidence of beauty. We don’t need to have an artistic reference,” assures Nathalie Legrand. In the boudoir, the metal lines of Catia Esteves, 36, a Portuguese artist, catch the eye. The young woman also shows her research miniatures. One of them became “Liberdade”, in Barreiro, Portugal, an immense sculpture of 600 meters of iron, homage to the 50 years of the end of the dictatorship in Portugal. “I was very touched to be able to do it, as someone from the generation that grew up in freedom. It is a line between earth and sky, between the dream of a just future and the necessary action,” explains Catia Esteves.
Also on display in the vault are ceramic works by Dora Stanczel, anthropomorphic sculptures by Catherine Dix and those of two paper magicians, Jean-Michel Letellier and Miki Nakamura. A journey “of all materials and in all directions”.
(1) Price: 4 euros; free for under-18s. Open this Friday from 2 to 6 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. in the former Banque de France, Place Franklin-Roosevelt in Périgueux.
