Miroir aux alouettes > Boris Chouvellon, 2014

After Last Splash, an installation created for the île aux Fagots, the artist Boris Chouvellon has returned with a work entitled Miroir aux alouettes [Decoys]. Initially designed for the town of King’s Lynn, this piece in mirror finish stainless steel has finally found its place right in the heart of the Hortillonnages Gardens, due to difficulties in installing it in the deep, muddy site which was orginally chosen. Like a strange craft, these strictly aligned gleaming sheets materialise here while deconstructing a fragment of the aquatic space. Twenty five square metres of water and a formal water feature accentuated by gleaming black buoys : suspended by a system of chains and tubes, these floating balls, both opaque and dazzling, create an effect of perspective in a unique ode to shipwrecks, hijacking materials normally associated with luxury yachting. Like a ship under construction, the whole is evocative at one and the same time of the practices of shipbuilding and its effects on the landscape : for the approaching visitor, it transforms itslef into a distorted, unrecognisable and anamorphic object.