22 Sep Laurent Grasso Casts the Heavens to Earth at Jumièges Abbey

Source Credit:  Content and images from Ocula Magazine.  Read the original article - https://ocula.com/magazine/insights/laurent-grasso-clouds-theory-jumieges-abbey/

Standing along the Seine River in Jumièges are the ruins of an abbey that is more than 1,300 years old. French artist Laurent Grasso illuminates its histories in his latest site-specific exhibition.

Few artists get the opportunity to work on a famous historical site but, for his latest project, Laurent Grasso was afforded carte blanche for his show in the ruins of Jumièges Abbey, a seventh-century Benedictine monastery in Normandy founded by Saint Philibert.

Grasso’s exhibition Clouds Theory (25 May–29 September 2024) sprawls throughout these ruins. It’s not the first time the Paris-based artist has shown work in unconventional spaces: in 2022, his exhibition Anima was presented in the grand Gothic sacristy of the Collège of Bernardins, a former Cistercian college in Paris. The year prior, his kinetic fresco—a collaboration with David Trottin—was unveiled on the ceiling of the Châtillon-Montrouge metro station. Forming a relationship with historic and public sites, charged with their own scars and stories, is a practice with which Grasso has grown familiar.

Exhibition view: Laurent Grasso, Clouds Theory, Jumièges Abbey, Normandy (25 May–29 September 2024). Courtesy Studio Laurent Grasso. Photo: © Aurélien Mole.

He made his first site visit to Jumièges Abbey in October last year, and describes learning about the historical events that occurred there—fire, invasion, plundering by the Huguenots—before it was decommissioned during the French Revolution. At that time, the monks were forcibly dispersed and the abbey was closed and converted into a stone quarry—an operation later suspended with the intention of retaining the site as Romantic ruins. Today, the abbey is the Jumièges region’s main tourist attraction—the writer Victor Hugo famously described it as ‘the most beautiful ruin in France’—and for seven Euros, visitors can explore its grounds and residual structures.

‘There were many kinds of very violent destruction at the site,’ Grasso tells Ocula Magazine. ‘I was influenced by this history, but also by the present context. I wanted to play with this dark vibration of the world of today, mixed with the history of the abbey, a place with this strong aura.’

Exhibition view: Laurent Grasso, Clouds Theory, Jumièges Abbey, Normandy (25 May–29 September 2024). Courtesy © Studio Laurent Grasso.

Consolidating these facets of past and present was a daunting challenge for Grasso, not least for the size of the ruins: the pair of towers extend nearly 50 metres skyward. ‘The most impressive part of the abbey is the nave, because of its height,’ he adds.

Not wanting his works to compete with or be overwhelmed by the site, Grasso explains how he ‘had to find a way to feel the space between my sculpture, my neon, and the architecture itself. So, I played with reflection and light.’

Exhibition view: Laurent Grasso, Clouds Theory, Jumièges Abbey, Normandy (25 May–29 September 2024). Courtesy © Studio Laurent Grasso.

Clouds Theory encompasses distinct groupings of works installed in the nave, cloister, choir, chapter house, and the abbatial dwelling. There are six copper sculptures that take the form of Grasso’s prototypical cloud motif, boulder-like in their presence and orientation. One side is polished to a mirror-like finish, while the bulbous opposite face is burnished to a blackened patina.

‘It’s a way to play with and reveal the architecture through the reflections,’ he says. ‘What’s also important for my project is that the site has no roof; it’s open-air. I wanted to give the feeling of the sky falling down, to have this impression of a disaster, with the clouds on the floor.’

Exhibition view: Laurent Grasso, Clouds Theory, Jumièges Abbey, Normandy (25 May–29 September 2024). Courtesy Studio Laurent Grasso. Photo: © Aurélien Mole.

Installed on the abbey’s stone walls is a constellation of neons that depict flame motifs, eyes, and a series of dates. At night, the works atmospherically glow red and blue against the pale stone. The dates reference significant world events: the Viking invasion of 841; the passing of Halley’s comet in 1066; the Black Death of Rouen in 1348; and, in 1562, the pillaging of the abbey by the Huguenots. But there are also more recent dates—the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020, for instance—as well as some in the future, including 2046, in anticipation of an unknown event.

Exhibition view: Laurent Grasso, Clouds Theory, Jumièges Abbey, Normandy (25 May–29 September 2024). Courtesy Studio Laurent Grasso. Photo: © Aurélien Mole.

‘It’s a collection of important historical moments that affected the world,’ Grasso continues. ‘Most of them are disasters, but it could also be more positive. It was another way to play with the memories and the history of the place.’

To walk through the grounds is a dissonant experience that scales the centuries of history embedded in the site. Time seems to warp and collapse: Grasso opens up the possibility of envisaging events from hundreds of years ago in tandem with those in the future. The sky is the only constant, along with the 500-year-old yew tree that still shelters the cloister.

Exhibition view: Laurent Grasso, Clouds Theory, Jumièges Abbey, Normandy (25 May–29 September 2024). Courtesy © Studio Laurent Grasso.

I ask Grasso what era he would travel to if he could. ‘The Renaissance in Europe was really interesting,’ he says. ‘The 1960s in Italy were, too, with the cinema industry, and filmmakers like Federico Fellini … Pompeii before the eruption I’m sure would also have been fascinating.’

For now, however, Grasso’s focus is on the imminent future, with a number of upcoming international projects, including a solo show this October at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York, an 800-square-metre permanent installation commissioned for a metro station in Paris, and a piece for the soon-to-open Black Gold Museum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. ‘I try not to be bored,’ he laughs. —[O]

Laurent Grasso: Clouds Theory is on view at Jumièges Abbey as part of the Normandy Impressionist Festival until 29 September 2024.

Source Credit:  Content and images from Ocula Magazine.  Read the original article - https://ocula.com/magazine/insights/laurent-grasso-clouds-theory-jumieges-abbey/