Le temps des fleurs

Sculpture Garden Chutes Lavie, Marseille 28/04/2025 - 31/06/2025 Landscaper : Jean-Baptiste Janisset Graphic designer : Paul Tellier Photographer : Axel Fried Line up : 1express, Hazel Ann Watling, Arnaud Arini, Stessie Audras, Adrien Vodo Barane, Pauline Bonnet, Julia Bonich, Gillian Brett, Bella Hunt & DDC, Sol Cattino, Olivier Cauet, Delphine Dénéréaz, Flore Faucheux, Clémence Genatio, Amandine Guruceaga, Florent Groc & Pizzayolaude, Mariia Kozhukhar, Bertand Lacombe, Juozas Laivys, Anne-Lise Le Dot, Lucien Lejeune, Fiona Mackay, Victoire Mandement, Mélissa Mariller, Elvire Ménétrier, Wilfried Nail, Théo Ouaki, Michella Perera, Gaspard Postal, Alexis Puget, Romain Rambaud, Jimmy Richer, Dorian Renard, Linda Sanchez & Baptiste Croze, Yoan Sorin, Paul Tellier & Alexandre Espagnol, Romain Vicari, Victor Yudaev Text by Élise Bergonzi The tide rises, carrying the spray of a new era over the heart of the city. The mist clears, revealing the pearly hues of a still-timid spring. Jean-Baptiste Janisset invites us into the hollow of his azure sculpture garden. Cacti, bryophytes, ferns, flowering plants and succulents have all answered the call. The time has come to gather. Like a beam of light breaking the winter torpor of the Phocaean city, spring blows a fresh, acid breeze over this urban Eden. Artists, designers, acolytes, and lovers have all been invited to sit at the table of this great vernal banquet. One guest, one pot of flowers, a communal offering to revive our aching souls. Healing elixirs containing the magical essence of the plants they house, the flowerpots in the exhibition are soaked with therapeutic vapours and distil juices of remembrance. Protective containers welcome fragments of ecosystems that are still asleep with open arms. Over time, they will become sticky little swamps, full of memory and sunshine. Can you smell the colours and shapes of these fragments of plant life? They echo, stretch and intertwine with the voices of the artists, whispering the power of our resilience. Is it possible to be a revolutionary and love flowers? Camille Henrot asked in 2012, bringing together a fabulous library of floral arrangements for her exhibition at the Kamel Mennour Gallery. Symbols of giving, contemplation, joy and sharing, but also of new energies, flowers are forms of healing. As antidotes to our anxieties about a disintegrating world, they caress us with their hairy stalks and gently heal our deepest wounds. Georgian roses, Portuguese carnations, Tunisian jasmine...flowers are also symbols of struggle and collective power. In the twisted hollows of their pots, slumbers an inexhaustible vigour, a spring love that refuses to fade. Like a muffled clamour between the leaves of a lemon tree bending under the weight of its sun-drenched fruit, Jean-Baptiste Janisset responds to Camille Henrot with a resounding yes that harmonises with mischievous dissent. Among the pots of wildflowers that embrace like lilies and roses on the stained-glass windows of an Art Nouveau church, he invites us to come and watch for the arrival of a rebellious spring. Somewhere between meditation and wandering, Le temps des fleurs is a fragrant ode, a ritual of communion and pleasure, a spiritual happening that guides us through the stormy lands of an endless summer.