Born in 1980, Adrien Vescovi came to prominence around 2010 with paintings on unstretched canvas, echoing the work of the French Supports/Surfaces artists of the early 1970s. Unlike his predecessors, however, his work carries no overt political message, drawing instead on practices associated with plant-based and ecological art.
With his installation Dormir comme le soleil (Sleeping Like the Sun), a title that evokes both the intensity of the Marseille summer sun and the need to rest beneath it, the artist invites us to slow down in a world whose economic order demands ever greater production and speed. Visitors can take their time wandering along the galleries of La Vieille Charité, Marseille’s former institution for ‘the poor and beggars’, shaded by sheets delicately draped over the building’s metal framework.
As is his custom, Vescovi sources his fabrics from Emmaüs before dyeing them with mineral pigments. More than 600 textiles, including old sheets, tablecloths and curtains, have been dyed in 300 different colours. Displayed in one of the ground-floor rooms like a library of colour, a collection of jars bears witness to the various dye baths used to create the installation’s chromatic palette.
His intervention unfolds spectacularly across all three floors and inside the chapel at the heart of this historic site. It is the most ambitious, and perhaps the most poetic, work ever created here. The effect is striking. The dyed sheets billow and ripple with the changing weather: the mistral, the breeze and the rain. Throughout the day, the three colourful façades continually shift, creating an abstract painting on the scale of this 17th-century monument. On display for almost six months, from spring to autumn, the work will bear witness to the passage of time and the elements, from the scorching summer sun to the first rains of approaching winter.
Exposing colour to the sun
The artist explains his project: ‘I create colours that are intended to fade.’ Like the Supports/Surfaces artists who exposed their works to the elements during the summer of 1970, Vescovi’s fabrics will fade in direct sunlight and tear in places under the force of the mistral, which sends the sheets beating against the yellow stone.
The work is therefore very much alive, and its capacity to evolve remains one of its defining features. The shadows cast by the fabrics create an interplay of light and shade, solid forms and empty spaces across the ground, engaging with the architecture in what is, in our view, the most successful artistic dialogue the site has seen to date.
→ Dormir comme le soleil, Adrien Vescovi, until 10 January at the Centre de la Vieille Charité, Marseille.
→ Discover our art tour through Marseille, Aix-en-Provence and the surrounding area