The Great Column, by Johan Creten

In La Garenne, Lemot created an idyllic and idealized landscape where he transposed memories from a trip he made to Rome in the late 18th century. Ornaments (statues, a cave, a temple, columns, gravestones…) create a landscape-sized composition that juxtaposes Italy with traces of local history.

After Eva Jospin, who added her permanent work Bois de la Gorgone in 2021, Johan Creten has been invited to create a dialogue with the estate and to set up a new workshop there for two years. He will present his work in a broader context during a 2024 solo show in the estate villa, sponsored by the Loire-Atlantique region.

Creten has worked with bronze (and ceramics) since the late 1990s, employing it for its symbolism, history, and material qualities.

Using bronze has allowed the artist to create monumental works in recent years: massive birds, extremely tall columns, benches, and more. Upon seeing these sculptures, new interpretations or meanings always appear because they do not aim at a precise imitation of an object or living being, but at revealing a plethora of meanings stemming from references drawn from both natural history and art history.

La Grande Colonne (“The Great Column”) was first made of marble powder and resin in 2010, and was on display at the Middelheim Museum in Antwerp, Belgium for a decade.

Today, this majestic, 5-metre tall (16 ft.) sculpture can be seen for the first time in bronze outside the workshops and landscaped gardens of Parc de la Garenne-Lemot.