Through his works, Olivier Kosta-Théfaine seeks to uncover the nature and poetry that is hiding in towns, drawing inspiration from traces of plant life that has taken over the concrete, such as a flower growing in the cracks of a wall, or ivy climbing up building facades. In Thuin, it was of course the flowers and plants growing on the walls of the old hanging gardens that attracted the artist’s attention.
For Fluide, Olivier Kosta-Théfaine therefore wished to adapt this view to a ‘non’ place. A place that tourists don’t see, a forgotten space, somewhat difficult to reach and never mentioned in the promotional information dedicated to the capital of Thudinie: the railway neighbourhood. This highly urban place is strongly representative of the modern town and can’t rival with the touristic treasures of the Ville Haute or even the Bateliers Quarter. Isolating the scientific names of the wild flora growing specifically on the walls of the hanging gardens, the artist inventories a list of flowers, according to the herbarium’s inventory method, on the tagged concrete walls of the viaduct, where clearly nothing grows. Echoing the graffiti, these names, cut out of steel, look austere, mysterious and difficult to understand. The contemporary materials used are also part of an ultra urban reality.
