The Picturesque

For the International Garden Festival, Hortillonnages Amiens, the artist Gilles Brusset sets up a series of mirages and kaleidoscopic games on the Île aux Fagots. The sculpture acts as a portal opening onto the archipelago of gardens: inside, a hall of mirrors, an aviary of light or a cage of reflections multiplies the landscape into a thousand fragments.

A self-supporting, proliferating and shimmering structure, the work seems to rise from the ground and spread through the hortillonnages, somewhere between crystallisation and networked organism. The orthogonal grid of the steel blends with the picturesque undulations of the banks of the Somme, and the landscape becomes an image, a mirage.

UOTNI handled the technical design and fabrication: 8 tonnes of steel and 2,200 linear metres of mirror.

The project on the Art & Jardins | Hauts-de-France website

UOTNI role

Technical design and fabrication

Artist

Gilles Brusset

Client

International Garden Festival, Hortillonnages Amiens

Materials

8 tonnes of steel, 2,200 linear metres of mirror

Date

2024

Location

Amiens, île aux Fagots (80000)

Execution

Fabrication and technical design: UOTNI

Photography

© Yann Monel