This is THE artistic event of the season. On October 14, 2022, the Collège des Bernardins welcomes Laurent Grasso, international contemporary artist, for an exhibition centered on the Earth, mysterious, which we must rediscover.
For a new exploration of the Earth strives to reflect on the crucial issue of ecological and social changes, by mobilizing scientific, spiritual and artistic approaches in an original way. This exhibition is the result of an intense two-year collaboration with the Collège des Bernardins, as part of the Laudato Si’ chair. For a new exploration of the Earth. It puts into perspective the artist’s own experiences and the conversations he had with scientists and historians.
The crucial issue of ecological and social changes is questioned in depth to allow us to transform our representations of the earth and our way of inscribing ourselves on it. This is a civilizational issue.
To do this, it is necessary to understand, in order to better transform them, all the thoughts, knowledge, representations and beliefs that have led man to conceive of the earth as an immutable habitat endowed with a reserve of indefinitely exploitable natural resources, and to remain insensitive to the “cry of the earth and the poor”.
The three years of work carried out alongside Bruno Latour to understand the levers of our “ecological insensitivity” – this collective indifference to the fate of the earth – constituted a first step shared during the international symposium “Gaïa facing theology” (Collège des Bernardins, February 2020).
Today, the Collège des Bernardins is mobilizing a group of researchers – explorers of this new land – around a new chair for research – action – education. Their mission will be to contribute to renewing our paradigms, our imaginations, our affects in order to learn to “love the earth and better inhabit it”.
The Collège des Bernardins has given carte blanche to the artist to offer a reading of our relationship to the Earth. By inviting Laurent Grasso, it is a world of doubts and mystery, specific to any spirituality, which will settle in the Collège des Bernardins. But a world that also reveals the power of the Earth, the cries of stone and the strangeness of fire.
The theme of fire
Fire, the central force of the Earth, also invites itself into Laurent Grasso’s exhibition, a strong bias in the artistic treatment of ecology.
With Laurent Grasso, fire contributes to a nature that is both fascinating and disturbing. Fire echoes the Collège des Bernardins in several ways. He is the revealing fire in the Old Testament and the purifier of the Holy Spirit; he is divine energy for the Orthodox and savior in darkness. It brings people together, it nourishes them, it gives shape and beauty.
What to see at the exhibition?
Laurent Grasso’s latest film, shot near the 11km pagan wall of Mont-Saint-Odile, in the Vosges, in which strange events will occur;
A new series of paintings in the nave of the Collège des Bernardins;
Bronze sculptures in the old sacristy and the nave.
This exhibition will be presented as part of OPUS 4 of the Bernardins Festival entitled “Terra Mysteriosa” and which will offer a multidisciplinary program – cinema, music and literature – around the theme of the place.
Laurent Grasso exhibition, from October 14, 2022 to February 18, 2023 at the Collège des Bernardins, 20 rue de Poissy – 75005 Paris
Laurent Grasso at the Collège des Bernardins for a new exploration of the Earth