The landscape of the Landes de Gascogne is characterized by its maritime pine forest, which, unlike other forests, sees its growth and extension through the hand of man. Europe’s largest artificial forest is transformed into tools and materials that testify to this symbiosis between nature and construction at Arc en Rêve’s White Gallery. After the installation of the Children’s Forest Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2024, which focused on questioning man’s interaction with nature and exhibition spaces, Arc en Rêve becomes a playground.

Like the children’s huts, the central space transforms into a black room bordered by a wooden skin. Supported by a delicate wood mesh, it captures the projected shadows from the herbarium of Léon Dufour, the botanist of the Landes, as well as samples collected from the forest. Each visitor becomes the creator of their own living painting for which the backdrop is a canvas for a multitude of stories. This sensitive exploration turns the space into a meeting place and weaves a link between the wild reality of nature and the dreams of humanity.

The continuous play turns the space into a theater. Each visitor can create their own forms and assemble the fragments of nature at will. A device, established from a repetitive system of perforations on a plate, allows the meticulous assembly of wood samples. Each piece of wood, each fragment of matter becomes a tangible trace of the forest: a memory, a vestige, a footprint of life. Far from being static, this scene changes every day, recomposed by the gestures and ideas of those who cross it.

Thus, the gallery becomes a landscape: an exploratory territory where visitors are invited to navigate between the real and the imaginary. The experience is sensory, each of the gestures and objects on display mediating between the individual and the immensity of the forest of the Landes. The exhibition is no longer simply a place to exhibit collected material, it is an invitation to rediscover the links that unite humans with nature; it is a place to tell a story, to tell the story of the forest and to question its future. 

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