Sean Scully exhibition at Château d'Oiron Blur The Edges, Love One Another
The Centre des Monuments Nationaux presents the exhibition Blur The Edges, Love One Another by Sean Scully at Château d'Oiron from 23 May to 6 October 2024.
Sean Scully is one of the most important artists of his generation whose work has changed the template for abstraction, by fusing the minimalism of American abstraction with the spirituality and metaphors of the European tradition. He builds his paintings and sculptures from simple forms, intuitively stacked and nestled in until they occupy all the available space and seem to shelter something sacred within. He is interested in the intrinsic properties of materials, whether that be the colour and sensuality of the paint, the delicately rusted surface of Corten steel or the contrast between the smooth and rough surfaces of stone. Scully's works are both physical and sensitive, at the crossroads of the material and emotional worlds.
With the aim of inviting the visitor to experience the landscape in a variety of ways, the Centre des Monuments Nationaux has invited Sean Scully to create a monumental sculpture for the Château's grounds, in the spirit of the factories that appeared in eighteenth-century English gardens. The artist chose to create a Stone Tower, a formidable ‘fortress’ made from local stone, whose weight and vertical angles will echo the scale and architecture of the Château. This is the first sculpture of Sean Scully’s to be on permanent display in a French public institution and will be unveiled in Autumn 2024.
As his sculptures and paintings are intimately linked, the artist has selected a group of eight paintings with which to present the Stone Tower in the wider context of his work. They are abstract paintings on aluminium, made up of fluid blocks of colour and porous spaces between them. The title of the exhibition, Blur The Edges, Love One Another refers to these spaces between the paint - or the stone - and so to the idea of blurring the boundaries between people and states, towards love and tolerance.
Venice Stack (2020), a sculpture of stacked blocks of Murano glass, a three-dimensional stained glass window imbued with a painterly sensibility, will greet visitors in the entrance hall of the castle, bridging the gap between outside and inside.
In the entrance hall, bridging the gap between outside and in, Venice Stack (2020) will greet the visitors. It is a sculpture of stacked blocks of Murano glass, a three-dimensional stained glass window imbued with painterly sensibility.
The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Jill Silverman van Coenegrachts.
