For our third exhibition in the emblematic Hôtel Richer de Belleval, the GGL Foundation invites the world-renowned artist Tadashi Kawamata, who has created a project especially for the site.

The artist not only exhibits in the rooms of the foundation, but he has also made a point of going beyond them, by installing Nests in the inner courtyard of the building, and Tree Huts in the Place de la Canourgue. These have an ambivalent status, as a balancing act between the state of precarious habitats (albeit too small and fragile to be occupied) and that of simple objects. The Tree Huts are meant to be visited only by the viewer’s imagination.

In the courtyard, the Nests are like deserted swallows’ nests. Kawamata ended up making a very large one that was not in his initial project, proof that as a work progresses and becomes defined, intentions change along with it.

Finally, in the foundation itself, the artist exhibits the models of the Montpellier projects, paintings in relief that oscillate between sketch and autonomous work. A sort of game is thus established between the third and the second dimensions, between the interior and the exterior, between the public and private spaces. Like the chicken and the egg, one comes to wonder which came first.

Born in 1953 in Mikasa, Tadashi Kawamata has exhibited all over the world and led projects in New York, Abu Dhabi and Tokyo. He lives in Paris.

Richard LEYDIER, Artistic Director of the GGL Foundation