FONTANE by French artist Antoine Espinasseau is an installation composed of 13 container-fountains, based on his work Pilars. The project celebrates Italian fountains and introduces a new series of imaginary sculptures in bronze inspired by the Sicilian landscape.

The exhibition unfolds as a catalogue of possible ways of perceiving and using both the Pilars and the fountains.

The Pilars are works that embody a legacy of material (plastic) and of form (the classic shape of a column base). They question how this legacy can be seen and lived with.

This legacy can be regarded as precious and sacred, holding flowers, coins, or statues, or as banal and everyday, serving as a support for common objects such as a rag, beers, or a dog bowl. As containers, the Pilars accommodate these different possibilities, and their use directly reflects the value we assign to them.

Italian fountains share this same ambivalence: they can be experienced as sacred objects or as ordinary elements of public space. The water from a single fountain may serve to make a wish or to fill a bucket, without hierarchy between these gestures.

Also on display is a new series of imaginary fruits that evoke landscapes. When we encounter a fruit, we instinctively try to imagine where it comes from, and fruit and landscape become expressions of the same reality. In this sense, sculpting a fruit is akin to sculpting a landscape. Inspired by Sicilian landscapes, these fruits nevertheless remain deliberately imaginary.

Antoine Espinasseau graduated in architecture from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Versailles in 2010. He then worked in architectural studios in Tokyo, Brussels, Rio de Janeiro, and Paris, where he also practiced as an urban planner. The urban projects he contributed to nurture his interest in the perception and representation of territory.

His artistic practice spans multiple disciplines, which he brings into dialogue with one another. Since 2011, his sculptures, films, collages, and photographs have been exhibited in cultural institutions, galleries, foundations, and biennials across Europe and Asia.