ALEXANDRE BENJAMIN NAVET
"Le voyage à Nantes"
Continuing his work around the ornamental dimension in public space, the artist imagines for the Place du Commerce a theatrical and colorful decor, inspired by its port and merchant history.
Celebrating the return of the square, its signs, cafés and restaurants with conquering terraces, after a long period of redevelopment, Alexandre Benjamin Navet instills a new effervescence; creating an experience where the public space comes alive and vibrates in color, in the image of a city that celebrates and struts its stuff, just as it might have done on the return of a ship.
Exploring history, archives and imagination, the artist summons very different universes to redraw an urban landscape, on the scale of buildings, by taking up the aesthetics of the sets and structures of cinema.
Playing with frames and perspectives, treating both the sober side of the set and the place richly decorated with details, Alexandre Benjamin Navet invites the public to enter and evolve in this theatrical installation that infuses all the elements of the Place du Commerce.