(Translated from French by JLB)
Collection, Fondation Valmont
Until 8 April 2018, the Château de Nyon is staging a series of pieces from the Valmont Foundation’s contemporary art collection. From cosmetics to modern art, everything remains a matter of beauty.
A cultural and philanthropic institution, the foundation organises art exhibitions all over the world. President and artistic director of the Valmont group based in Morges, Didier Guillon invites his favourite artists to collaborate on artistic projects that beat to the rhythm of modern and contemporary art, an art that he considers a source of inspiration in the conception of the universe of a product or range. After the Venice Biennale and the Greek island of Hydra, it is in the Château de Nyon that the institution presents a series of pieces from its collection. This history of art is also a history of water, since after the Adriatic and Aegean Seas, it is Lake Geneva that serves as the setting for this presentation. Entitled “Elective Affinities”, after Goethe’s novel – the first title imagined was “Dangerous Liaisons”, after the work of Choderlos de Laclos, one of whose characters is called … In Valmont-, the exhibition welcomes several artists whose modern creations are in harmony with the old stones of the castle.
Among them is Jane Le Besque, an English designer now based in Geneva, who draws her inspiration from nature to create an imaginary, fragile and poetic universe. The forest, a recurring theme, is at the heart of her “Moveable Garden”, an installation made up of several large-format panels.
Another artist dear to the foundation, Silvano Rubino lives and works in Venice, and carries out research oriented towards the interaction between the physical dimension of the place on the one hand, and the individual on the other. He frequently uses glass, Murano glass or industrial glass, combined with materials such as steel and marble. In Nyon, Rubino exhibits a whole series of pieces including an “Illuminated ladder”, an installation in metal, Plexiglas, glass and candelabra, a large metal table with an extra-thin glass top, or the “Portrait of a memory passed over a golden rectangle”, a small marble head placed on a precious metal base.
In addition, the Artigas Foundation, a friendly institution created in memory of the famous ceramist Josep liorens Artigas, who collaborated intensely with Joan Miro, invests one of the rooms of the castle with a dozen “Artists’ Dishes”, ceramic plates signed by Antoni Tapies, John Himmelfarb or Frederic Amal.
