Eloge de la contemplation

Galeries Lafayette invites its customers to the heart of a prestigious setting that immerses them in an irrational and enchanting place, creating a unique experience. The brand invites artists and designers to create original works in the department stores' and under its dome, which enhance and sublimate this architectural heritage.

While the windows of the boulevard Haussmann are dressed in the colours of the programme of eight emblematic Parisian institutions, the Coupole will host for the first time a work conceived by a visual artist. Philippe Ramette's work L'éloge de la contemplation (Le Temps suspendu...) echoes the exhibition on the theme of the fall, All That Falls, conceived by Gérard Wajcman and Marie de Brugerolle at the Palais de Tokyo from 6 June to 7 September 2014.
True to the poetry he conveys in his works, Philippe Ramette has created an installation whose universality will enter into dialogue with the entire cosmopolitan public of Galeries Lafayette. At the end of a wooden footbridge, starting from a balcony of the Galeries Lafayette, a man, represented by a white sculpture, is sitting on a platform, itself suspended by a balloon. The man, who has taken care to remove some of the wooden planks of the footbridge behind him, takes full advantage of this moment of contemplation.
Philippe Ramette could have been this character who, a few metres above the ground, decides to take a makeshift footbridge to reach a unique viewpoint. The artist is no stranger to challenges. To make his photographs in which he is the main character, he has been able to free dive in the Red Sea, or to stand on a balcony overturned in the water of Hong Kong harbour. The wooden footbridge evokes the films of adventurers, and suggests the possibility of falling, which is very present in Philippe Ramette's work. The praise of contemplation (Le Temps suspendu...) revives the image of the romantic hero, irredeemably alone and aspiring to infinity.