Juan-Pablo Villegas
D’après le Jardin - Installation - 2019
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 21
Installation
D’après le Jardin by Mexican artist Juan-Pablo Villegas is a sound installation inside the glasshouses of the Jardin Botanique in Tourcoing. Visitors are invited to walk through and listen to a number of sound pieces that evoke the great orchestra of nature.
With this work, the artist invites us to reflect on the relation between nature and culture, two terms that are considered antithetical. Thus, according to him, if we become aware of all the things that connect us with nature, then we could construct a more fusional relationship. The garden is the place par excellence where man’s work and nature’s both express themselves and cohabit.
This presentation will be the occasion for talks organised in collaboration with two researchers whose work guided the research: Emanuele Coccia (lecturer in social sciences at the École des Hautes Études and author of La vie des plantes), and Manuela De Barros (philosopher, theoretician of the arts and lecturer in philosophy, aesthetics and theories of the arts at the Université Paris VIII). The artist will also put on a concert.
Juan-Pablo Villegas
Juan-Pablo Villegas sees filmmaking as a way to bring together his interest in images and sound. It takes as a starting point the body’s perception of external stimuli and how that influences our personal and collective experience. The tools he uses derives from audiovisual principles that allow reflection by changing the way they are conventionally used. In recent years, he has researched issues related to translation and the expansion of the sensory spectrum, the animist condition of objects, and the formation of the psychosomatic.
