La chambre des lisières > Solène Ortoli, 2018

The visual artist Solène Ortoli likes her exhibits to be on the threshold between dreams and reality. The garden she designed for the “Festival des Hortillonnages” was the result of this concept and is on an island planted with alders and birches. From her first visit, she was attracted by the graphic qualities of the plot, the alignment of trees and the succession of wooded areas, which for her evoke the chapters of a story. By following the thread of this story, she has composed a space in two parts which plays with the landscape of the Hortillonnages in the same way as a stage in the theatre. Mirrors, openings and windows reveal and deform the panoramas as the visitor progresses. The visitor is trapped in a game of diffraction and reflection, which makes the horizon difficult to define. In the distance, a wooden structure challenges: is it scenery from a theatre or a piece of architecture? In the hollow of the walls, openings create vanishing lines towards the rear of the plot. The walker whose path ends here, needs only to look, his glance lost in the distance.