LORIS GRÉAUD

As the Casa Wabi was being designed, Loris Gréaud was contemplating burying his sculptures to create a real ‘underground’ sculpture park. After several years and many correspondances and meetings between the artist and the Casa Wabi Foundation, The Underground Sculpture Park will be inaugurated there on the 1st of February 2020.

Loris Gréaud has selected twenty or so of his iconic art pieces produced since the start of the 21st century, which will be buried forever along the natural paths formed within the gardens designed by Alberto Kalash as a continuation of the institution architecture created by Tadao Ando. Yet, this real sculpture park will remain hidden from the public: only benches marked with the anniversary date of the park official opening, in February 2021, will be placed once the vegetation has returned. Visitors will be able to sit on them and enjoy a contemplative outlook onto the surrounding landscape and the art pieces lying a few metres below their feet in some sort of backward archeology.

The artist’s concept – both straightforward and extremely intricate in its execution - astutely brings in the epitome of the ghost: the pieces are invisible, yet physically present. Visitors are therefore encouraged to project these pieces, picture them, fantasize about them. Thus, the artist’s intention is not to put an end to them but to start an exploration of their underlying potential through everyone’s imagination by using this form of selfnegation: what if these pieces were to be unearthed and reappear?

This very concept eventually indicates a break in the work of Loris Gréaud as he explored, with his project The Unplayed Notes (2012-2018) and its various occurrences, the question of space between art pieces and now focuses on their potential destination. Therefore, in symbiosis with the Casa Wabi Foundation’s philosophy and with the support of the local community, the artist brings up the concept of a romantic journey allowing his pieces to travel to the edges of the world, in a freely accessible place seemingly timeless, yet in perfect harmony with its surroundings.

The Underground Sculpture Park asks us to contemplate this poetic event and bring our own answer: what message would be sent to the world if an artist came to conceal the vestige of their work and have it move as the constant drift of a sculpture park which would be real yet could only be accessed through people’s mind?

In conjunction with the official opening of The Underground Scultpure Park, Hatje Cantz Publishing will release the catalog The Unplayed Notes / Introduction to The Underground Sculpture Park which, together with an essay by Nicolas Bourriaud, closes the seven-year-long project which travelled through many places including Paris, New York, Dallas and Venice.