Denis Savary (born in 1981) has crafted a career blending video art, sculpture, and scenography. His work, known for its playful yet challenging nature, explores diverse references and the intersection of the mundane with the fantastical. His exhibition in Biel/Bienne starts from “Lagune” (2016), a performance piece inspired by the Dada movement, culminating in the video “Athènes” (2018-2025), which captures a final performance against the backdrop of the Parthenon. The exhibition’s title, “Nashville”, reflects on cultural echoes, linking Tennessee’s “Athens of the South” to ancient Athens. Savary’s works here are new adaptations of his previous creations, playing with spatial perceptions and architectural elements. Notable pieces include “Figueras” (2021-2025), with its light-infused parasols, and “Charm” (2025), a suspended glass sculpture evoking multiple interpretations. The exhibition concludes with “Night Shift” (2025), a fountain sculpture symbolizing community and wisdom, tying back to themes of Athens through an owl imagery.
Denis Savary: Nashville / Kunsthaus Biel Centre d’art Bienne. Biel/Bienne (Switzerland), February 15, 2025.
Exhibition text (translated from German):
For twenty years, the video artist, sculptor and scenographer Denis Savary (*1981) has been developing a work that is both challenging and playful, full of references of the most diverse kinds. The artist repeatedly works with derivations or associations of ideas, thus mixing the most heterogeneous worlds of imagination – like a writer who is immersed in a stream of thoughts, or an artificial intelligence that finds unexpected similarities between different motifs. Each of his exhibitions spins its own story in an unstable territory. The most banal everyday life or the most insignificant detail meet fantastic stories and grandiose images.
The starting point for the exhibition in Biel/Bienne is an older project that the artist developed in response to an invitation to mark the centenary of the Dada movement. Savary realized “Lagune” (2016): a choreography that shows a puppet by Sophie Taeuber-Arp in a stage set made of backlit Plexiglas building facades, all of which are moved by dancers. After performances in Paris, Zurich and Geneva, the piece was last performed in 2018 on the roof terrace of EMST, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens. The footage of this last performance on the terrace, which offers a breathtaking view of the Parthenon, was then edited together to create the video “Athènes” (2018-2025). This work, in the passage to the Salle Poma, represents, so to speak, the scenographic script for what opens up afterwards.
The title of the exhibition illustrates the artist’s approach: Nashville, the capital of Tennessee, is famous not only for its music, but also for its cultural and educational commitment, which has earned it the nickname “Athens of the South”. A replica of the Parthenon was built there at the end of the 19th century. The monument was renovated in 1920 and supplemented in 1990 with a replica of the lost Athena statue. The exhibition in the Salle Poma is a reflection of these echoes of time and the weathered or disappeared replicas. Although all the works shown here were produced specifically for the exhibition, they are adaptations and reinterpretations of the artist’s existing works, which in their arrangement are reminiscent of the video work Athènes. For example, the roof terrace of the Greek museum is indicated by a backlit wall. The presence of this architectural element inside the white cube in itself leads to confusion about the space depicted. The wall is decorated with sculptural elements that refer to both miniature ruins of ancient temples and the characteristic radiators in the old building of the Kunsthaus. In reality, it is a bloated and bleached version of Savary’s older works, which are inspired by the sculptor Brancusi, the painter Philipp Guston and ice hockey shin guards.
This topographical ambiguity, the play between inside and outside, is also found in “Figueras” (2021-2025): closed parasols made of semi-transparent fiberglass, whose shape and material suggest both costumes and sweets. The sculptures here are equipped with an LED light system that allows for constantly changing interior lighting. This continuous stream of light is sometimes shaken by stroboscopic twitches, as if these parasols harbored a thunderstorm within themselves, as if they themselves contained the storms from which they were supposed to protect us. The wooden platform on which they stand resembles the terraces of cafés or a raft floating in the exhibition space. But the romantic tone can also make Figueras seem to us as a strange echo of Arnold Böcklin’s “The Isle of the Dead” (1880-1886), with the parasols representing the cypresses from the famous painting.
The sculpture “Charm” (2025), suspended from the ceiling, is made of glass recycled using the so-called “bousillé” technique. Originally inspired by a ritual doll, its shape is reminiscent of a crude marionette. Its milky consistency and its position several meters above the ground make it look like a satellite or a kind of floating mollusk. Or it could be the mirror ball of an abandoned discotheque – a motif that fascinates the artist and which appears in his video “Le Must” (2004) shown on the mezzanine floor. This last aspect reveals an essential component of Savary’s work: his imaginary predilection for the periphery and for popular practices. This is also the case for “Night Shift” (2025), the last work created for the exhibition. Inspired by a fountain in a Geneva park, the sculpture consists of a superposition of conical basins reminiscent of Greek column capitals – a fountain with a similar structure also exists in the city park of Biel/Bienne. From Marcel Duchamp to Meret Oppenheim, artists’ fountains have often been the subject of avant-garde experiments and scandals. Savary’s fountain is first and foremost a symbol of a village square and in its own way completes the entire exhibition. On its surface is the image of a sleeping owl with its wings spread by two hands – a photo taken by a Swiss civil servant during the ringing of the animal. The night bird, here sleepy but with its wings spread, could thus embody a kind of paradoxical guardian of this exhibition immersed in night. Moreover, as a symbol of the wisdom of Athena, it represents a final reference to Athens.
