You were warned. After ten editions of spectacular works in the city’s unmissable squares, the Trip to Nantes is playing it a little more discreetly for its 11th edition launched this weekend, and we like it. The green line stops this year in places where we did not expect it, and where it sometimes takes a few minutes to find the works, at the risk of completely missing out.
Sunday, at our first stop at the Talensac market, this is for example what happened. “Oh look, did you see that? “says a dad to his daughter, who left their shopping without noticing anything. Because to discover the charming automatons, which the oldest Nantes residents had known on rue Joffre several years ago, you have to keep your eyes open. Raise your head: these wooden figures come to life above each of the doors of the hall, used for the first time.
A few hundred meters away, at the cemetery of Mercy, some visitors seem a little disoriented. They did not come to flower the grave of a loved one, but to look for the plastic surgeon’s deer Pascal Convert, carved into four glass bas-reliefs. Hidden in the vegetation of the oldest part of the cemetery, these hinds, fawns and other roe deer appear at the turn of the narrow alleys. Even more surprising, they follow visitors with their eyes. “It’s really fascinating,” Madeleine whispers to her husband. They fit perfectly here, I find. Let’s look a little more to see if there are others a little further (spoiler: no). »
Armada of Creatures
Returning to the city center, the same. Don’t pass too quickly near the Sauvetout gate without saying hello to the beaver of the past edition. And don’t be too disconcerted to find a place Royale quite bare compared to the wreckage of last summer’s boat. Because here again you have to take a “step aside” to immerse yourself in the world of Hélène Delprat, who has invested in the most confidential place Felix Fournier, just next door. There, an armada of black resin creatures with flags seem to parade, perhaps in connection with the angel and his megaphone, installed by the same artist in the center of Place Graslin. “It’s both cheerful and disturbing, judge Elisa, who came to do the course with the family. We don’t know if they’re leaving the basilica, if they want to go back in… We want to mingle with them or, on the contrary, to run away from them. »
Until September 11, 60 works, including 26 unpublished, are to be discovered. If the regulars do not necessarily expect to find an installation on the Place du Commerce, still under construction, this one is unmissable once you are there. Like a theater set, huge colorful panels cover the buildings, Fnac store and cinema, immersing passers-by in a sketchbook made in oil pastel. “He reuses elements of the architecture of the city of Nantes and reinterprets them”, indicates a mediator. Amphitrite, old buildings… Again, sharpen your eyes to find them all!