Spring exhibition
Strates d'impermanence From 19 March to 31 May, Claire Poyer and Sun CHA are exhibiting their works at Trizay Abbey, in an exhibition that explores time and matter. Spring Exhibition The works of Claire Poyer and Sun CHA engage with the Abbey’s spaces, offering a sensory and immersive experience. The exhibition features paintings and art installations that play with layers of materials and the movement inherent in each artistic gesture. It is an invitation to observe, feel and take the time to discover contemporary art. Informations pratiques 19 march au 31 may 10 am to 1 pm and 2 pm to 6 pm Prices €6.50 / adult €4.50 / teenager (13-17) €3 / child (6-12) Free for children under 6 Contact +33 (0)5 46 82 34 25 contact@abbayedetrizay17.fr Claire POYER Claire Poyer practises analogue photography and, for several years now, has been pursuing a visual exploration fuelled by her reading and an experimental approach to calligraphy and installation art. Her works, often minimalist in nature, play with words, lines or dots. Here, they take shape using Indian ink or coloured threads on unexpected surfaces: bamboo stalks, oyster bags… Within the historic spaces of Trizay Abbey, she creates installations that engage in dialogue with the architecture. They resonate as a variation on the binary motif of fullness and emptiness, of Yin and Yang. Her work draws inspiration from the Yi Jing, the ‘Book of Changes’, a major text in Chinese philosophy. Each subject of study is translated into an abstract work, characterised by restrained, serialised traces, where impermanence and transformation are made visible through repetition and contrast. The body of work invites an attentive perception of rhythm, layers and the Yin/Yang dynamic: change at work More about the artist Artist’s website Sun CHA It is through a gentle tension, a restrained intensity, that the work appears both serene and vibrant. Each of CHA Sun’s canvases is an exploration of her inner world. It forges a connection, through that taut thread that is memory, between her homeland, her culture and the new ‘platforms’ where she seeks to settle. CHA Sun’s painting is rooted in a direct relationship with reality. The gesture is the event: it becomes intention, an absolute presence. Each brushstroke inscribes, layer upon layer, the trace of a conscious and embodied presence. One senses immanence: the force of that which reveals itself, here and now, without representation, without transcendence, in the pure vibration of matter. Far from being at odds with immanence, CHA Sun’s painting simultaneously opens up to the depths of memory—the memory of forms.
Autumn exhibition
Réflections From 3 September to 11 November, Hugo Terracol and Laurent Sarpédon are exhibiting their works at Trizay Abbey. Autumn Exhibition More information to come Practical information From 3 septembre to 11 novembre From 10 am to 1 pm and 2 pm to 6 pm Tarifs €6.50 / adult €4.50 / teenager (13-17) €3 / child (6-12) Free for children under 6. Contact +33 (0)5 46 82 34 25 contact@abbayedetrizay17.fr Introduction to the artists Hugo Terracol Born in 1988, Hugo Terracol is a French painter. From a very young age, he developed a passion for the ‘Second School of Paris’ movement, which opened the door to abstraction for him, whilst his encounter with Zao Wou-Ki led him to discover Chinese art. Hugo Terracol then set out in search of a new synthesis between traditional Chinese painting and Western abstraction. His oil paintings explore the immaterial elements of nature: light, air, space, the ‘Breaths’, vital energy, and so on. The artist examines the flow and interrelationship between these elements. The painterly medium is explored to its full potential, in all its finesse and subtlety: the blending of pigments, the vibrations of materials, flashes of light, transparencies, harmonies of colour, and the balance of the composition. Driven by the ‘Souffles’ and a powerful dynamism, Hugo Terracol’s paintings are intended to be moments of flight and freedom, in which the grandeur of nature unfolds the inner song of all possibilities. Hugo Terracol is the 2022 winner of the Jean-Roch Sauer / Raphaël / Sennelier Prize, awarded by the Taylor Foundation to recognise a painter who stands out for the quality and mastery of their technique. He also won First Prize and the People’s Choice Award at the Rencontres Contemporaines de Beaune in 2024. Hugo Terracol has just completed an artist residency at the Ningbo Museum of Art (China). His career has featured around sixty solo and group exhibitions. Laurent Sarpédon Laurent Sarpédon was introduced to the language of the visual arts at the École des Beaux-Arts du Port in Réunion, where he was born. He then moved to mainland France to undertake vocational training as a stonemason at the Volvic School of Architecture, which specialises in stonework. On his return to Réunion, his work was noticed and received encouragement and recognition from leading Réunionese sculptors such as Alain Séraphine and Henri Maillot. Back on the mainland, in the Creuse region, at the Lycée des Métiers du Bâtiment (LMB) in Felletin, he trained in stonework and architecture as a restorer of historic monuments. His personal research and mastery of techniques have enabled him to develop his own distinctive artistic language.Whether in residence or in his studio, Laurent Sarpédon continues to develop his artistic approach, which he presents in various exhibitions and shares through workshops with community organisations, in schools and at university. A sculptor and visual artist, in his new studio in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, he conceives, designs and creates his works using a variety of techniques and materials, primarily steel, stone and bronze. Drawing on his knowledge of these materials, he considers what each can contribute, by its very nature, to the internal structure of a complex whole and to the work as a whole, so that it makes sense. He works to link and articulate them so that one meets the other, assembling them in a structured, balanced and aesthetic manner.Thus, his work with materials is a sculptural, visual translation of the inner vibrations of human beings in relation to their life context. Edwige Bénis
Summer exhibition
Lieux de passage(s) From 5 June to 30 August, Anne Saussois and Laurent Noël are exhibiting their works at Trizay Abbey. Discover their artistic worlds, which explore the concept of passage and our perspective on the landscapes we pass through every day. Summer exhibition Du 5 juin au 30 août 2026, l’Abbaye de Trizay présente Lieux de passage(s), une exposition qui réunit les univers de deux artistes : Laurent Noël et Anne Saussois, dont les démarches artistiques se rejoignent dans une même attention au mouvement et à l’expérience sensible du monde. Mis en regard, leurs travaux dialoguent autour de la notion de parcours – parcours de l’eau ou parcours du corps et transforment des expériences physiques en œuvres picturales. Dans les deux cas, l’œuvre ne se contente pas de représenter : elle propose une traversée, où le regard du visiteur devient lui-même un mouvement, une exploration entre mémoire etimaginaire Practical information From 5 june to 30 august From10 am to 7 pm Prices €6.50 / adult €4.50 / teenager (13-17) €3 / child (6-12) Free for children under 6 Information +33 (0)5 46 82 34 25 contact@abbayedetrizay17.fr Introduction to the artists Anne Saussois Walking – whether in the city or in the countryside – is the common thread running through Anne Saussois’s entire body of work. Standing before her canvases, the viewer is invited to enter the space, to let their gaze wander amongst the contours and depths of a precariously balanced geometry. Inspired by the memories of her wanderings through the city, Anne Saussois’s paintings convey the experience of the body moving through urban space: it is the architecture that unfolds before the eye and the imagination in motion. The artist reconstructs her visual and sensory impressions through line, but also through the sensitive use of colour, shadow and light. By playing with the transparency of layered colours, and making use of the white of the canvas or paper, she creates multiple passages, openings and depths that lend a real sense of relief to the flat surface of the painting. The viewer’s eye climbs the stairs, traverses volumes, ventures into the depths of mysterious spaces and scales a labyrinth of scaffolding … Diana Quinby Laurent Noël Laurent Noël, a painter, draughtsman, engraver and author, lives and works between Anjou and the Atlantic coast. For his latest series, *Les Jusantes*, he drew inspiration from the patterns discovered in deposits of seaweed, woven and left behind with each tide by the movement of the water. Along the foreshores, the artist captures through line and words what the ocean ‘has made’ (Mare fecit is, incidentally, the title of one of his poetic texts, recently published by Editions Alcyone). Brought back to the studio, these organic forms become, through paintings, drawings, prints or artist’s books, metaphors for memory, time, transience, loss and renewal. The painter’s gesture and that of the water converge in a graphic expression that is both spontaneous and structured. Dialogues unfold between form and content, here and elsewhere, presence and absence, matter and temporality, space and time. The works offer an experience that is at times contemplative and immersive through their large formats, and at other times intimate through artist’s books and prints, in a poetic and sensual approach to the line that invites the viewer to connect these traces to their own story.