Le Large Art Center Opens In Former Renault Factory On Île Seguin

(MENAFN- USA Art News) A new contemporary art center, Le Large, has opened on Île Seguin in Boulogne-Billancourt, located in the western suburbs of Paris. The institution is part of Pointe des Arts, a cultural development valued at €450 ($504.5 million), which also includes a cinema and a hotel. This opening marks another phase in the transformation of the island, historically an industrial site that housed a Renault factory for much of the 20th century.

Designed by Pritzker Prize–winning RCR Arquitectes, the building features a distinctive geometric shape, expanding from 5,382 square feet at its base to 16,146 square feet on its fifth floor. Its façade is made of warm, copper-colored anodized aluminum, arranged in diamond-shaped, overlapping scales. The name“Le Large” is intentionally evocative, echoing the French expression“prendre le large,” meaning to head out to sea.

Director Paula Aisemberg commented on the name's significance to ARTnews in an on-site interview ahead of the opening.“The expression resonates with the island setting and its relationship to the water. It conveys the possibility of escape, departure, and discovery,” Aisemberg stated. With an estimated annual operating budget of €5 million ($5.6 million), Le Large plans to utilize its 26,910 square feet of exhibition space flexibly. This may involve a single exhibition spanning the entire museum, as with the inaugural show, or multiple simultaneous exhibitions on different floors for its second season.

Le Large aims to attract a broad audience, with approximately 40 percent of its public-facing areas offering free entry. The first floor provides visitors with ample seating in a sundrenched lobby for conversations, alongside a bookshop, concept store, and a staircase that doubles as an amphitheater. This multipurpose staircase leads to a mezzanine and escalators directly to the fifth floor. Before reaching the exhibition galleries, visitors will find two spaces by designer Constance Guisset: Extra Large, an 80-seat coffee shop with panoramic views and seasonal food, and Le Petit Atelier, which offers free workshops for children aged six to ten.

The center operates on a hybrid model, combining a nonprofit association with an endowment fund and a commercial entity for venue and private event rentals. The association, chaired by collector Laurent Dumas, oversees all of Pointe des Arts on Île Seguin, focusing on promoting French artistic creation. Its primary patron is the Emerige Endowment Fund, the philanthropic arm of Dumas's company, Emerige. Le Large is the latest initiative in the fund's contemporary art-focused projects, which include a grant for emerging artists and a commissioning program called 1 immeuble, 1 oeuvre (1 Building, 1 Artwork).

Pointe des Arts will likely invite comparisons to other collector-founded private museums in Paris, such as Bernard Arnault's Fondation Louis Vuitton and François Pinault's Bourse de Commerce. Architecturally, the Fondation Louis Vuitton and Le Large are both purpose-built cultural projects. The Bourse de Commerce, in contrast, transforms a historic building with contemporary interventions by Tadao Ando and heritage specialists. Curatorially, the Fondation Louis Vuitton focuses on major retrospectives and international exhibitions, while the Bourse de Commerce is more directly tied to Pinault's collection.

Le Large's curatorial direction for the long term remains to be fully established; it will focus on presenting a changing program of temporary exhibitions rather than building a permanent collection or housing Dumas's personal holdings. The inaugural exhibition, titled“ Moteur Imaginaire” (Imaginary Engine), features Cecilia Alemani, director and chief curator of High Line Art in New York and curator of the 2022 Venice Biennale. Alemani described the exhibition's concept:“The display follows the car on an imaginary journey, from the factory floor to the assembly line, out into the world as an object of desire, and finally into the algorithm. That metamorphosis, from mechanism to living organism, is what drives the whole exhibition.”

Drawing on Renault's industrial history,“Moteur Imaginaire” presents over 100 works by 55 artists from 23 countries, dating from the 1930s to the present. Renault has a history of commissioning artists through its Art, Research and Industry program, which brought artists into its factories, including Jean Dubuffet, Arman, Jean Tinguely, and Victor Vasarely. About 50 pieces from the Renault collection are included in the exhibition, supplemented by historical photographs and archival material documenting the factory and its workers. Aisemberg emphasized the importance of this historical connection, stating,“We felt it was essential to acknowledge that history.”

The exhibition layout, designed by French designer Pascal Rodriguez, unfolds across four successive spaces separated by partition walls with large circular openings. These apertures, aligned along a single axis, create a perspective reminiscent of an automotive assembly line. Aisemberg explained,“You feel as though you're inside a machine, a car park, a tunnel, or perhaps inside an engine cylinder.” Alemani added,“For almost a century, the Île Seguin was home to the Renault factory, a fortress of production that turned out some 30 million cars: a machine for making machines. I wanted the exhibition to work the same way, as an assembly line for machines and for ideas.” At each opening, Alemani has positioned a car. The first installation is an 1898 Renault automobile transformed into a painted wooden palanquin by Ghanaian artist Paa Joe Junior, which is part of Laurent Dumas's collection. Next is Arman's intervention on a life-size wooden model of a Renault 10, originally made by Renault engineers, where the French artist cut it.

Source: ARTnews

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