Rien à ajouter > Thomas Wattebled, 2019

On the Île aux Fagots, the artist Thomas Wattebled has composed a circular message on the lawn. He has cast thirty-three letters in white concrete, and the message is read at grass level. This is a monumental installation of about ten meters in diameter and 2 centi-metres in height, which also describes the artist. “Sentiment de ne rien pouvoir ajouter,” he writes: ten years after his first participation in the Hortillonnages International Garden Festival in Amiens, the visual artist admits, with a smile, his discouragement in the face of multiple artistic exhibits that, year after year have enriched the site. But the message, without beginning or end and arranged in a circle, has a double meaning, ” ne rien pouvoir ajouter au sentiment,” depending on where the visitor starts to read the message. The temptation is to try to start reading the text from every word until the visitor is lost in the text and so he must walk around and around … unless he decides to interrupt this endless rotation by sitting down on one of the letters.