"Sables brûlants" at La Grande Place

2021
Working with molten crystal at the Cristallerie Saint-Louis, 2016 © Tadzio
Guillaume Dénervaud, "STRATA", 2019, La Grande Place, Musée du Cristal Saint-Louis © Olivier-Henri Dancy / Fondation d’entreprise Hermès
Lucia Bru, "(movidas)", 2016, La Grande Place, Musée du Cristal Saint-Louis © Olivier-Henri Dancy / Fondation d’entreprise Hermès
Atsunobu Kohira, "Instrument pour Saint-Louis", 2011, La Grande Place, Musée du Cristal Saint-Louis © Olivier-Henri Dancy / Fondation d’entreprise Hermès
Olivier Sévère, "De rien ne se crée rien", 2010, La Grande Place, Musée du Cristal Saint-Louis © Olivier-Henri Dancy / Fondation d’entreprise Hermès
Emmanuel Régent, "Himmelsturz", 2018, La Grande Place, Musée du Cristal Saint-Louis © Olivier-Henri Dancy / Fondation d’entreprise Hermès
DH McNabb, "The Heart(h) of Saint-Louis", 2015, La Grande Place, Musée du Cristal Saint-Louis © Olivier-Henri Dancy / Fondation d’entreprise Hermès
Oliver Beer, "Outside-In", 2012, La Grande Place, Musée du Cristal Saint-Louis © Olivier-Henri Dancy / Fondation d’entreprise Hermès
Marie-Anne Franqueville, "Presque innocente", 2013, La Grande Place, Musée du Cristal Saint-Louis © Olivier-Henri Dancy / Fondation d’entreprise Hermès
Since 2010, as part of the Artists’ Residencies programme of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, the Cristallerie Saint-Louis has hosted a total of eight artists, each of whom has undertaken singular experiments and explorations around the unique skills used in the creation of crystal ware. The exhibition “Sables brûlants” [“Burning Sands”] at La Grande Place brings together for the first time the works created in this exceptional artisanal context.

Each artist’s residency begins in the same way, with the discovery of the site itself, whose imposing red roofs rise above a thickly forested valley that has been home to a glassmaking industry since 1586. This is followed by a phase of deep immersion, during which the artists discover the skills of the workshop’s craftspeople, an expertise that has been handed down from generation to generation. Finally, a production phase sees each artist-in-residence partner with the master glassmakers of the Cristallerie Saint-Louis to create an original work of art – a chance for both artists and craftspeople to reorient and view their own process of making in a new way. Reinventing ancestral gestures and pushing the limits of artisan skills, they undertake joint experiments with crystal that give rise to new pieces in which this material is transfigured to become a terrain of artistic research in its own right.

Presented under the title “Sables brûlants” in a reference to both the raw material and the fiery process that gives crystal its form, the works brought together here attest to the fascinating and inventive character of the Artists’ Residencies programme. As integral elements of the artists’ oeuvres, these pieces reflect the creative impulses and fixations of their creators: the mysteries of time for Atsunobu Kohira, the many states of light for DH McNabb, the history of art of Emmanuel Régent, ecology and science fiction for Guillaume Dénervaud, space and matter for Lucia Bru, the body’s defence mechanisms for Marie-Anne Franqueville, the perception and materialisation of sound for Oliver Beer, or the geological history of crystal for Olivier Sévère. 

For Gaël Charbau, the curator of this group exhibition, these pieces point to “the unique atmosphere of these fiery workshops, which constitutes a world apart from our own in which creators allow themselves to explore new artistic perspectives” in ongoing dialogue with the master glassmakers. In this way, the “grains of their imaginings become the titular burning sands”. Visitors can discover these burning sands at La Grande Place, at the heart of the Musée du Cristal Saint-Louis, amidst the unceasing drone of the kilns which, thanks to the exacting gestures of the glassmakers, continuously transform and fuse raw materials into exceptional pieces of craftsmanship.

Disciplines
Craftsmanship
Visual arts
Lieu
La Grande Place
Saint-Louis-lès-Bitche
France
The exhibition “Sables brûlants” brings together for the first time the works created by resident artists at the Cristallerie Saint-Louis.
The works on show here attest to the fascinating and inventive character of the Artists’ Residencies programme.
Artists and craftspeople undertake joint experiments with crystal, reinventing ancestral gestures and pushing the limits of artisanal skills.

Information

  • Exhibition dates

    "Sables brûlants", group show, from 19/05/2021 to 13/12/2021

  • Practical information

    La Grande Place, Musée du Cristal Saint-Louis, France 

    Daily (except Mondays), 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

    Contact: +33 (0)3 87 06 40 04

    Admission included at no extra cost with entry to the museum

See also