Hastings Contemporary<\/a>.<\/p>\nAnge Leccia, \u201cAller et venir de lumi\u00e8re,\u201d l\u2019Abbaye, Saint-Martin-de-Boscherville<\/p>\n
Ange Leccia, \u201cAller et venir de lumi\u00e8re,\u201d l\u2019Abbaye, Saint-Martin-de-Boscherville<\/p>\n
Paul Allen\/ Andfotography2<\/p>\n
This mesmerising video installation explores the movement of light across water and landscape. Projected within an historic abbey and using footage of Monet in his gardens, the work creates a meditative dialogue between natural rhythms, memory and the passage of time.<\/p>\n
Lionel Sabatt\u00e9 \u201cThe Memory of Silt, a tribute to Claude Monet\u201d Mus\u00e9e Blanche Hoschedt\u00e9-Monet<\/p>\n
Lionel Sabatt\u00e9 \u201cM\u00e9moire de Limon,\u201d Mus\u00e9e Blanche Hoschedt\u00e9-Monet<\/p>\n
Paul Allen\/ Andfotography2<\/p>\n
Nominated for the 2025 Marcel Duchamp Prize, Lionel Sabatt\u00e9 is known for transforming reclaimed and organic materials into works that explore memory, time, and transformation. Working with everything from wood and stone to dust, sediment, and found objects, he creates sculptures and installations that reveal unexpected beauty in overlooked materials. For the festival project, Sabatt\u00e9 used silt dredged from Monet\u2019s water lily pond at Giverny to create a pigment for a series of screen prints based on archival and contemporary photographs. Drawing directly from the physical substance of the garden itself, the works are a direct connection to Monet\u2019s legacy and the landscape that inspired some of his most celebrated paintings.<\/p>\n
Cai Guo-Qiangai \u201cRadiance of Spring\u201d Espace CULT \u2013 Hangar Ladner, Vernon<\/p>\n
Cai Guo-Qiang \u201cRadiance of Spring\u201d Espace CULT \u2013 Hangar Ladner, Vernon<\/p>\n
Paul Allen\/ Andfotography2<\/p>\n
For the preview of the Impressionist festival, Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang thrilled the crowd with a live creation of one of his famous gunpowder paintings. Visitors can see the result alongside a number of other works he created in the runup to the festival, in the giant warehouse. Cai Guo-Qiang is well known for his large-scale works made using gunpowder, fireworks, and carefully staged explosions. Working with both control and chance, he creates images formed by burn marks, smoke traces, and bursts of color, turning an explosive material into a means of making images rather than destroying them. In Radiance of Spring, which draws on Monet\u2019s gardens at Giverny, these volatile effects suggest changing light and atmosphere, echoing the Impressionist focus on fleeting moments and perception.<\/p>\n
Mika Ninagawa \u201cFloraison Sauvage\u201d Cath\u00e9drale Notre-Dame de Rouen<\/p>\n
Japanese photographer and director Mika Ninagawa\u2019s Floraison Sauvage projects vivid floral imagery across the exterior fa\u00e7ade of one of the world\u2019s most beautiful cathedrals, interwoven with images of people in motion. The Gothic stonework becomes a shifting surface of color, bodies, and blossoms, briefly animating the building into a layered, luminous composition of nature and human presence.<\/p>\n
Diana Scherer \u201cThe Light in the Nets,\u201d \u00c9glise Saint-Nicolas de Caen <\/p>\n
Diana Scherer \u201cThe Light in the Nets,\u201d \u00c9glise Saint-Nicolas de Caen<\/p>\n
Paul Allen\/ Andfotography2<\/p>\n
A series of \u201ctapestries\u201d made from plant roots form an intriguing installation in an ancient former church and feel especially resonant given the famous Bayeux Tapestry nearby. The roots have been forced to grown in a certain way to create patterns on the resulting lacey textiles. The work by Dutch artist Diana Scherer can be seen as similar to Claude Monet\u2019s gardens, in its focus on a carefully composed, garden-like environment where nature, light, and perception are shaped through design but still allowed to develop in unpredictable ways.<\/p>\n
C\u00e9leste Boursier-Mougenot \u201cPoints de Suspension,\u201d Frac Normandie<\/p>\n
C\u00e9leste Boursier-Mougenot \u201cPoints de Suspension,\u201d Frac Normandie<\/p>\n
Paul Allen\/ Andfotography2<\/p>\n
Sculptor and musician, C\u00e9leste Boursier-Mougenot created a site-specific installation featuring eight swings and bells on a floor of recycled clear glass pieces from local factories, in the courtyard of FRAC Caen, the \u201ccity of one hundred bells.\u201d The church bells chime when the swings are in motion and upstairs you can see yourself upside down on the swings downstairs, in a video recording taken 15 minutes earlier. The work\u2019s appearance, especially the glass floor changes with the light, creating an environment that is experienced over time rather than seen as a single image, a connection to Claude Monet\u2019s interest in light, atmosphere and changing perception through repetition. With the glass pieces on the floor, the viewer can imagine a pebbled beach and Monet\u2019s many paintings at the seaside.<\/p>\n
Julien des Monstiers \u201cPink, orange, red sun,\u201d Mus\u00e9e Eug\u00e8ne Boudin, Honfleur<\/p>\n
Julien des Monstiers \u201cPink, orange, red sun,\u201d Mus\u00e9e Eug\u00e8ne Boudin, Honfleur<\/p>\n
Paul Allen\/ Andfotography2<\/p>\n
Award-winning French painter Julien des Monstiers is known for bold, expressive works that rework landscape and classical motifs through layered color and gesture. His \u201cPink, Orange, Red Sun,\u201d shown at the Mus\u00e9e Eug\u00e8ne Boudin in Honfleur, was developed in connection with his residency at La Ferme Saint Sim\u00e9on<\/a> hotel in Honfleur, where he followed in the footsteps of the many Impressionist painters (Monet, Courbet, Sisley, Corot and Boudin) who stayed there.<\/p>\nFujiko Nakaya \u201cFog Tree #07031,\u201d Jardin des Personnalit\u00e9s, Honfleur<\/p>\n
Pioneer of installation and video art in Japan, Fujiko Nakaya opened Japan\u2019s first video art gallery in Tokyo in 1980 and has collaborated with leading artists and choreographers, including Trisha Brown, Robert Rauschenberg, and Bill Viola. In 1970, she created the world\u2019s first fog sculpture for the Pepsi Pavilion at Expo \u201970 in Osaka, launching a practice of immersive fog installations that she continues today. Her fog sculpture, in the park in Honfleur where Monet learned to paint trees, provides both a welcome relief from the heat and an ethereal experience for the viewer as the fog wafts through the leaves of the poplar tree creating beautiful, delicate patterns.<\/p>\n
No\u00e9mie Goudal \u201cThe Story of Fixity\u201d Le Portique \u2013 Regional Centre for Contemporary Art, Le Havre<\/p>\n
No\u00e9mie Goudal \u201cThe Story of Fixity\u201d Le Portique \u2013 Regional Centre for Contemporary Art, Le Havre<\/p>\n
Paul Allen\/ Andfotography2<\/p>\n
At Le Portique Regional Centre for Contemporary Art in Le Havre, No\u00e9mie Goudal\u2019s The Story of Fixity presents staged, physically built landscapes that slowly shift or break apart as you look at them. The works are constructed as real 3D sets and then filmed as 2D video pieces, using photography and projection to create a sense of unstable depth.<\/p>\n
Ai Weiwei \u201cWater Lilies\u201d and Monet Exhibition, MuMa \u2013 Mus\u00e9e d\u2019art moderne, Le Havre<\/p>\n
Ai Weiwei, Water Lilies #1 (2022), LEGO\u00ae brick works reinterpreting Claude Monet\u2019s Nymph\u00e9as, Mus\u00e9e d\u2019art moderne Andr\u00e9 Malraux, Le Havre<\/p>\n
Paul Allen\/ Andfotography2<\/p>\n
Ai Weiwei\u2019s \u201cWaterlilies,\u201d made from 650,000 pieces of lego, is both an homage to Claude Monet and to his father, Ai Qing, a well known poet who had studied art in France in the early 1930s. From a distance, the 15-meter long work is a remarkable take on Monet\u2019s famous waterlily paintings with their shimmering blue, pink and green flowers. It\u2019s only when you get close that you can see the intricate mosaic of tiny lego pieces. You\u2019ll also notice the black rectangular section on the right, a reference to the cave Ai Weiwei’s family lived in during their exile in northern China in the 1960s and 1970s. Alongside Ai Weiwei\u2019s work is an exhibition of early work by Monet who spent his childhood and teenage years in Le Havre. His early caricatures are here, some never exhibited publicly, as well as three paintings that Monet donated to the city.<\/p>\n