GROUP EXHIBITION: with Laura Parsons (landscape architect), Maria Mona Finn (Phd, artist), Anna Aslaug Lund (Phd, architect MAA)
SUPPORT: Havekulturfonden, Dreyers fond, Ingwersenske fond, Boyes Fond og Leth & Gori.
WHEN: Fall 2020

About

The exhibition is a dissemination and interpretation of impressions from Gilles Clément’s private garden La Vallée.

LEARNINGS FROM A GARDEN
In 2019, Gilles Clément invited his former student landscape architect Elzélina Van Melle and her Danish colleagues, Swedish artist Maria Finn, Danish architect Anna Aslaug Lund, and British landscape architect Laura Parsons to visit his own garden, in Creuse, 300 km south of Paris. Inspired by Clément’s proclamation that “the garden is dedicated to the future, a territory of hope”, the group immediately set off for France. Shortly after their return to Denmark, they launched a multifaceted dissemination project that has since grown, culminating in the 2020 exhibition ‘The Wisdom of a Garden’, with inspirational material from Clément’s garden.

The exhibition was shown at the Copenhagen-based Gallery Leth & Gori and is now expanding further with the publication of the english translation of the essay “Gardens, Landscape and Natural Genius” edited by IKAROS Press.

Gilles Clément occupies a global special position at the crossroads between philosophy, art, landscape architecture and ecological thinking. He is the author of a large number of books, articles and essays and among his executed landscape works are, for example, the Parc André-Citroën in Paris, the Jardin du Musée du quai Branly in Paris and the Parc Matisse in Lille.
Today, our cities and landscapes face major challenges in the form of, for example, declining biodiversity, climate change and resource scarcity. Much points in the direction that our approach to the relationship between city and landscape and our view of ecologies should change. Gilles Clément’s thinking and practice constitute a central source of inspiration for future work with place-specific ecological cycles in cities and landscapes.