Les Extatiques 2023

For the fifth time, Les Extatiques take up residence at La Seine Musicale, where the Département des Hauts-de-Seine is exhibiting the works of six artists on the theme of the 4 elements on the roof-garden and forecourt of this cultural emblem of the département.

Free exhibition in the public area (forecourt and north walkway) and in the Jardin Bellini.
The Jardin Bellini is open daily from 11 a.m. to dusk (July 22 to 31: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. / August 1 to 31: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. / September 1 to October 1: 11 a.m.-8 p.m.).

Artists in the program

1. PHILIP HAAS - Four seasons, Spring, Automn
2. JULIEN SALAUD - Silver porpoise
3. JOËLLE ALLET - Skybirds
4. CORNELIA KONRADS - Urban Wildlife
5. BOB VERSCHUEREN - Coda
6. JÉRÉMY GOBÉ -CoralAnthropoceneArtifact, CCA1 Witnesses

Les Extatiques 2023 - location map of works on the Seine Musicale side

1. PHILIP HAAS - Four seasons, Summer, Autumn, 2012-2023

Philip Hass, USA

Philip Haas is a multi-talented artist. As a sculptor, he draws his inspiration from a surrealist aesthetic, notably creating the monumental Four Seasons series, which has been touring museums and gardens for the past twelve years. During the Italian Renaissance, the eccentric paintings of composite heads by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) attracted a fascinated public. They were then rediscovered in the early 20th century when they were adopted by the Surrealists, notably Salvador Dalí and Man Ray. Philip Haas in turn became interested in these works and imagined their sculptural reinterpretation in three dimensions. In a spectacular transformation typical of his work, he created a group of large-scale painted fiberglass sculptures, representing the four seasons. The result is earthy, whimsical and exuberant. The world of classical Renaissance portraiture is transposed to urban landscape, public art and city life, altering the viewer's vision.

The work for La Seine Musicale

Philip Haas proposes an original composition, agreeing to separate the seasons on the two exhibition sites, each time drawing inspiration from the nature of the site to renew the approach to his works. On each site, the two seasons face each other, reproducing the effect of Arcimboldo's portraits. Emerging from the earth, fashioned with and by fire, by human labor, these monumental sculptures challenge the scale of urban space and engage visitors with their uchronic aesthetic. At La Seine Musicale, at the foot of the staircase leading up to the Bellini gardens, the Summer and Autumn seasons interact with Rodin's work.

Four Seasons, Summer, Autumn, 2012-2023
Pigmented and painted resin
Interior steel structure, 300 × 300 × 500 cm (each)
Edition 1/3

See the work of Philip Haas at Paris La Défense

2. JULIEN SALAUD - Silver porpoise, 2023

Julien Salaud, France

Julien Salaud studied ethnology before spending three years isolated in the Amazon rainforest in French Guiana, where he worked to protect the environment. On his return to mainland France, he began training in the plastic arts. arts. After several exhibitions in France and abroad, he developed a new artistic approach, drawing on human relationships and creating social links around his artistic practices. Nourished by his many travels and personal experiences he is particularly interested in the power of legends and the imagination. For several years now, Julien Salaud has been working with materials and techniques used by Amerindian peoples: beads, feathers, furs, arrow knots, weaving... He has also turned to working with wax, metal (lead and tin), wood, straw, plaster and, more recently, ceramics.

The work for La Seine Musicale

Stranded on the roof of La Seine Musicale, the Silver Porpoise, inspired by the species classified as "near-threatened" by the INPN, appears suspended, ready to join the Seine. Visible from afar, the work surprises and questions. The mixed technique used by the artist (inflatable, paint, sculpted wood) creates a certain ambiguity, prompting reflection on current environmental issues and the symbolic relationship between man and animal.

Silver porpoise, 2023
Hand-painted inflatable sculpture
400 cm

See Julien Salaud's work at Paris La Défense

3. JOËLLE ALLET – Skybirds, 2020-2023

Joëlle Allet, Switzerland

Joëlle Allet develops multiple artistic languages. Her three-dimensional works oscillate between art and design, lightness and irony. Particularly sensitive to art in the public space, her playful, conceptual approach allows serial objects and installations to emerge in close relation to their context of emergence. Often with physical engagement, a subtle sense of irony and specifically chosen dimensions, she creates artworks that presuppose an openness of perception and thought, a seductive force and a palpable desire to intervene. In collaboration with production companies, she explores the limits of feasibility in order to create something new, while respecting the material and its evolution over time. In recent years, she has created a wide range of objects and wall works using innovative materials.

The work for La Seine Musicale

"Skybirds" was the name of a series of 1:72 scale airplane models produced in England in the 1930s and 1940s. The "Skybird" kite designed by George Peters inspired Joëlle Allet with its powerful, imperative aesthetic, which she emphasized by staging it as a multiple object. In her work, she questions industrial mass production by playing with the different contrasts and absurd similarities of instruments of play and war through a series of oppositions: black/white, lightness/gravity, dynamic/static, freedom/constraint. In the Bellini gardens at La Seine Musicale, the site-specific work deploys ten kites, majestic birds that come alive in the wind and seem ready to break their anchorage to the ground to take to the skies.

Skybirds, 2020-2023
Kite installation
Variable dimensions

4. CORNELIA KONRADS - Urban Wildlife, 2023

Cornelia Konrads, Germany

Cornelia Konrads focuses her work on site-specific, unique installations of both sculptures and objects. She has participated in a number of sculpture and Land Art projects worldwide. For each artistic project, she begins with an in-depth exploration of the site and its particularities. Each work is developed in close dialogue with the architecture, topography, vegetation and history of the surrounding area, and is created mainly with elements and materials found on site. Cornelia Konrads' work reflects her reflections on the relationship between nature and culture, transformation and temporality, and is inspired by forms present in the landscape, which she diverts to better reveal their oetic, comical or mysterious side. In her creations, she likes to create unstable moments, spaces of uncertainty that defy the laws of gravity and construction.

The work for La Seine Musicale

A group of benches seem to inhabit the roof garden. They resemble existing communal benches. But here the inanimate comes to life, like a herd of animals, they occupy the meadow, seemingly in harmony with their earthly lives. They suggest a peaceful, rather idyllic idyllic... except that some of them are about to leap over the railing and into the void. The work perched on the roof La Seine Musicale's landscaped roof offers visitors several points of view: from a distance, the benches poised on the roof, ready to fall, intrigue on the roof, ready to fall, intrigue, then as you stroll through the garden, their accumulation both amuses and questions. The relationship with the earth, the object that becomes an animated subject, but also the overcoming of gravity, are the themes at the heart of this artistic project.

Urban Wildlife, 2023 Installation
Mixed media
Variable dimensions

5. BOB VERSCHUEREN – Coda, 2023

Bob Verschueren, Belgium

Bob Verschueren began his artistic approach with painting. His exposure to landscapes led to a fascination with their plant components. He began to use the elements of nature as a means of expression. Using local materials, he creates spectacular sculptures that evoke both the splendor and decay of all living things. Each piece reflects on man, his life and death, and his relationship with his natural environment. When an installation resonates with the site in which it is installed, it becomes self-evident, establishing a tension between the timelessness of the proposition and its ephemeral nature. Following on from his large-format works, he also creates "plant miniatures" based on leaves and twigs, which he photographs, as well as bronzes based on the same series. Nature is always at the heart of his work.

The work for La Seine Musicale

A boat seems to have run aground on the Île Seguin, its final destination. It contains a jumble of flower pots, some fitted with loudspeakers from which, as visitors approach, aquatic sounds and creaking wood emerge, mingled with a kind of strange song produced by an alto violin. Plants grow in between this chaos.

Coda, 2023
Installation, boat wreck, earthen pots, sound
Approx. 730 × 150 × 50 cm
Sound composition: Bob Verschueren
Aquatic sound recordings: Miguel Allo
Viola improvisations: Vincent Royer
Studio Climax, Liège
Technical production: Centre Henri-Pousseur

See Bob Verschueren's work at Paris La Défense

6. JÉRÉMY GOBÉ - CoralArtefact-Anthropocene, Witnesses CCA1, 2023

Jérémy Gobé, France

After studying at the Beaux-Arts in Nancy and the Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Jérémy Gobé built his work around a central idea: as Auguste Rodin said, "art that has life does not reproduce the past, it continues it. He seeks out objects that have no use and works that have not been shaped, workers without works and materials without workers. In the course of his exhibitions in France and abroad, his works impose a reconnection with the living; from ancient know-how that he declines, projects, transforms, Jérémy Gobé proposes us through the imaginary to reflect on solutions likely to respond to contemporary problems. He has won several awards for his Corail Artefact project, which combines art, science and technology to save coral reefs around the world.

The work for La Seine Musicale

On the roof of La Seine Musicale, scattered over the green mound of the Bellini garden, the 22 ecological modules create a superimposed landscape where the geometry of the shapes, the coral motif, the vivid color, the flora of the garden and the architecture of the building mingle. The work moves from the depths of the ocean to the vegetated garden!

CoralArtefact-Anthropocene, Témoins CCA2, 2023
CCA2 ecological concrete invented by the artist, iridescent patina
22 modules

See Jérémy Gobé's work at Paris La Défense