©Meaghan Matthews
©Meaghan Matthews
©Meaghan Matthews
With SÈVES — À fleur d’eau, Meaghan Matthews presents a site-specific installation composed of organic forms in blown glass, arranged across the surface of the water at the Hortillonnages. The bubbles, each one different, appear to float at the water’s surface like silent emergences from the landscape.
The project takes its inspiration from sap, that invisible flow circulating between earth, tree and water. Through this image, the artist explores the dynamics of living systems and the subtle relationships that connect different environments to one another. The surface of the water becomes here a space of revelation: it reflects the sky, the trees and the seasons, while receiving these translucent forms that capture and diffract light.
Glass occupies a central place in the artist’s practice. A material that is at once solid and born of fire, it retains the memory of the fluid. Its transparency allows her to work with phenomena of reflection and perception: depending on the time of day, the weather or the position of the visitor, the bubbles can appear almost invisible or intensely luminous. The installation thus evolves in rhythm with the site, without ever imposing itself upon it.
Sited on the Île aux Fagots, the work was conceived in close dialogue with the specific context of the Hortillonnages. The calm water, the rieux and the surrounding vegetation provide a setting conducive to a discreet intervention, attentive to the site’s equilibria. The technical approach is deliberately minimal: each piece is held in place by a reversible and non-invasive system, with no permanent anchoring or alteration of the environment. The whole can be dismantled without leaving a trace.
The arrangement of the bubbles forms an organic constellation, neither entirely geometric nor random. This organisation suggests a living system, a network, a circulating organism. From a distance, the visitor first perceives unusual reflections; drawing closer, they discover the forms and their variations. The experience is gradual, inviting a slowing of the gaze and an attentive observation of the interactions between matter, light and landscape.
Through this work, Meaghan Matthews seeks not to transform the site but to reveal one of its sensory dimensions. SÈVES — À fleur d’eau acts as a developer in the photographic sense: it makes perceptible what is already in circulation, water, light, time, and proposes an attentive encounter with the living world.
Project realised with the support of Thomas Segaud, glassmaker, and Jean Paul Santamaria De Obregon, coppersmith