Eyrignac & its gardens and the Castle of the Departmental Domain in Campagne (Dordogne) will be showing the works of the sculptor and painter Christian Lapie beginning in April 2021. The exhibition, organized at these two locations, will be offering visitors a reinterpretation of these two cultural places through the presence of Christian Lapie's work.
Face to face with Christian Lapie’s Artwork
Works all in black, the sculptures and paintings of Christian Lapie, seem to be timeless. Born from instantaneousness creative gesture, made out of primary materials - limestone, iron oxide, cement, wood, tar -, his chthonic figures, trees and men or men and trees, draw their evocative power from their anchoring into the earth, since time immemorial; they are our memory, they question our present, they foresee our future. That being said, let us contemplate the works of Christian Lapie or is it rather the works of Christian Lapie that contemplate us?
Eyrignac & Its Gardens: A Reflection of Simplicity and Sophistication
Eyrignac and its gardens, Nature’s beauty sublimed, preserved in a vegetal green bower, impresses the visitor by its sophisticated style. Absorbed by the garden, the visitor’s eye nevertheless moves beyond the place itself and the beauty of the surroundings. The presence of Christian Lapie’s six monumental sculptures, arranged along the edge of the garden, in holes, invites the viewer to a decentering and to a refocusing on these works, often made of oak, their heads pointed into the sky as in the forest of Périgord whose trees are considered kings. Hidden or unveiled, depending on the point of view of the visitor, without ever imposing though they are imposing, such are these mediators between the wild and tamed states of nature. They open the viewer’s eyes to perspectives other than those evoked by French gardens, offering pathways between the rational world and emotional experience.
The Castle of the Departmental Domain of Campagne
The traces from the Castle of Campagne’s past hold inside their walls three human-size sculptures and twelve of Christian Lapie’s paintings. Hung on the stone walls, without cyma, black on white, these paintings are like footprints that the forest would have left, memories from an archaic time. His creative style reminds us of cave painting, an ancient practice that draws a continuous link between prehistoric man and modern man, a link between today's Domain of Campagne and the memory of the natural site, in the heart of where it is nestled. Outside, in the landscaped gardens, like a tree in a forest, a representation of a bygone era, bearer of the memory of a thousand years’ time which observes the present and foresees the future, there is a monumental sculpture Le Souffle du Temps. It is composed of seven figures of which three are in oak, making the link between the forest, the exhibition, the building and far beyond, with the works exhibited in the gardens of Eyrignac.