SPACES Board member Laurent Danchin has launched a campaign to restore components of the Village d’Art Préludien created by Chomo (Roger Chomeaux, 1907-1999) in a small parcel located within the Fontainbleau forest in France. Although Chomo studied and successfully created and exhibited his work within the art mainstream as a young man, in 1960 he moved to this site, became a hermit, and spent the rest of his life creating an impressive environment of idiosyncratic buildings as well as numerous sculptures; most of the work was fabricated from recycled materials of all types. He named the site to reflect his feeling that his art served as a prelude to a new world that we would be soon to enter.
l´Église des Pauvres (The Church of the Poor) at night, 2009. Photo by Laurent Danchin.
The emphasis for the first phase of this conservation project is to restore Chomo’s Refuge; most of the other buildings, amazingly enough, are still in excellent shape, even after fifty years in the forest. Nevertheless, vandalism, theft, and deferred maintenance have taken their toll. Students and alumni from the Nantes School of Visual Arts will be guided by Fabrice Azzolin, teacher at the school and president of the IRES institute (Institute de Recherches et d’Études Scéniques). Future plans include the construction of an enclosure that will surround and protect the site, and, ultimately, the development of a study center where creators and thinkers from all fields will come together to share their ideas and their knowledge.
For further information, or to contribute to this project, contact Laurent at laurent.danchin@free.fr.
Jo Farb Hernández
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