Gabriel Orozco Fleurs fantômes

Gabriel Orozco visited the old guest apartments of the Prince and Princess de Broglie (the last private owners of Château de Chaumont-sur-Loire) for only a few moments when his gaze was drawn straight to the torn wallpaper remains—so discreet that they were no longer noticed. These faded impressions, modest vestiges, extremely fragile traces of a past now behind us, immediately captured his imagination. Orozco was invited to “take over the château” as part of a special commission for the Centre-Loire Valley region. In his fascination with the remnants of the old tapestries that once graced the walls of these rooms—closed off and forgotten about since 1938—Orozco devoted hours to studying the palimpsest of the floral tapestries, still hanging on these old walls: photographing them over a considerable amount of time whilst listening to the echoes of ages past. The artist, whose work is inspired by the quest for traces, remnants, marks left by men, has chosen an approach that looks back at the history and memory of the château at Chaumont-sur-Loire. In these fragments of old, timeworn, threadbare tapestries, Gabriel Orozco detected traces of these lives now long gone by: a matrix of a subtle meditation on space and time.