Nicolas Sanhes at Chateau Sainte Roseline

Chateau Sainte Roseline presents this summer the monumental works of sculptor Nicolas Sanhes, installed in the gardens of the prestigious vineyard.

Besides its exceptional Cru Classé wines, Chateau Sainte Roseline offers each year artistic events of international quality. For its fifteenth summer exhibition, Aurélie Bertin, owner of Sainte Roseline, presents Sanhes Nicolas‘ monumental metal sculptures, featuring lines born from his concept of “incident geometry”.

Emergence of new and unexpected forms

Nicolas Sanhes, born in 1965 in Rodez, entered Perpignan School of Fine Arts in 1984. During his studies, he was attracted by the radical positions of artists like Ellsworth Kelly or Ad Reinhardt, pushing the internal contradictions of Art to their limits. His early creation years saw him deploy tar, a deep black material, over large areas where it expected the emergence of new and unexpected forms.

Aurélie Bertin & Nicolas Sanhes

Works produced with steel IPN

Back in Rodez, Nicolas Sanhes continued his early work called “sculptures-tools”. He conceives the sculpture in terms of construction by implementing complex manufacturing systems. He then produced a series of “soft sculptures” before creating egg-shaped sculptures whose internal structure already contains the lines that will give birth to the “incident geometry”, a concept that signs his true style of works created with square steel IPN.

Push the tensions to the limit

The style Nicolas Sanhes invented has four components: the void as force, the line as tension, time as pulse and space as breathing. The artist draws his lines with computer software, pushing tensions to the limit, deforming and and bursting the meshing of a line first built with 14 elements, but needing a 15th to fill the void to create a monumental sculpture (an incident of geometry) thus born from an “incident geometry”. Nicolas then cuts the square IPN after his design and welds all the parts to create a one-off work of Art.

Infinity of sculptures readings

Nicolas Sanhes’ sculptures establish a resonance between the lines of their composition and the inner emptiness whose strength bears them. Painted white, the sculptures provide an impression of lightness and the color, combined with the diversity of lines, allows an infinity of works readings, with the lines downstrokes and upstrokes and the reflections of light on the faces of the IPNs which are not not perfect squares.

The sculptures are exhibited in the gardens of the Château, along the aisle of bi-centennial plane trees and in front of the Chapel Sainte Roseline that contains the treasures of its steeped-in-history past.

Chagall’s Miracle of Angels

The Chapel Sainte Roseline

The Chateau Sainte Roseline houses an ancient twelfth-century Franciscan cloister – sold as a “bien public” at the French Revolution. In the Chapel Sainte Roseline is kept the mummified relic of Sainte Roseline and one can admire works by Chagall, Giacometti, Bazaine and Ubac. An altarpiece describes Sainte Roseline’s family while Chagall’s mural describes her Miracle of Angels; a sculpture also shows Sainte Roseline’s Miracle of Roses.

About Château Sainte Roseline

Sainte Roseline is located thirty minutes from Saint-Tropez, Cannes and the Gorges du Verdon. Boasting seven centuries of wine culture, the vineyard offers “Cru Classé des Côtes de Provence” Rosé, Red and White wines. Pioneer of oenotourism in France, it offers a harmonious marriage of oenology, terroir, landscapes, culture, vineyards, history and heritage. The beautiful estate can accommodate business and social events with the Salle des Barriques, the Salle des Vendanges, the Caveau, the Tasting Room.

Nicolas Sanhes
Château Sainte Roseline
83460 Les Arcs
Tel. 33 (0)4 94 99 50 30

www.sainte-roseline.com