CHAUMONT-SUR-LOIRE .- Twelve artists have been invited to Chaumont-sur-Loire for this new Art and Nature season, over which dream and poetry reign supreme. The Château’s west and south wings are exhibiting dreamlike landscapes by the great Chinese artist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Gao Xingjian, entitled Appel pour une nouvelle Renaissance (Call for a New Renaissance). 2019 sees the return of the Ghanaian artist El Anatsui, with a new installation of rivercraft masterfully upended across from the Loire, symbols of the “forgotten boatmen” who plied their trade at the service of humankind, materials and ideas...

In the Donkey Stables, the Brazilian artist Janaina Mello Landini ’s ghostly forest of braided ropes is an immaculate silent reflection of the agonies of trees too often subjected to the violence of humankind. Faithful to his infinitely poetic universe and meditations on time, erosion and the instability of all things, Stéphane Thidet has designed two spectacular installations, Les pierres qui pleurent (the Weeping Stones) and There is no Darkness (Il n’est pas d’obscurité), respectively located in the Bee Barn and the Lower Le Fenil Gallery.

The unclassifiable Agnès Varda is inviting us into her imaginary world and Serre du Bonheur (Greenhouse of Happiness), where sunflowers are engaged in joyous dialogue with delicate strips of celluloid from abandoned copies of her old films. That magician of matter Christian Renonciat made “wood talk” in an erudite dialogue with the Château’s and Stables’ architecture, while the Domain’s Grounds and Farmyard act as venues for imposing and mysterious sculptures by the Chinese artist Ma Desheng and the French artist Vincent Mauger.

This Art Season also sees its fair share of green creations, with Côme Mosta-Heirt ’s glass and wooden Portes (Doors) in the Château and Stables, a mineral and vegetable vertigo by Cornélia Konrads, a Mille fleurs (Thousand flowers) tapestry by Luzia Simons, and Marc Couturier’s subtle porcelain Orangers (Orange trees). In short, a new Art Season in which dream, imagination and creation are inextricably intertwined.