Arles in high summer is a city of light and movement. Plane trees shiver. Stone radiates heat. Into this familiar Provencal rhythm steps Something Moves, an exhibition by Caroline Corbasson at Atelier Ma, on view from July 7 to October 5. It is the second Art & Environment Prize project from the Lee Ufan Arles art center and Maison Guerlain, selected from more than 550 applicants by a jury led by Lee Ufan with filmmaker Wim Wenders and museum head Laurent Le Bon. The premise sounds airy. The result is precise.
Corbasson spent eight weeks in residence in the ancient city, watching the sky and letting the wind set the brief. The works move across oil on canvas, drawing, video, photography, and poetry. A minimalist circle focuses attention like the eye of a storm. Lines that catch light suggest the quiet exhale of air. In the galleries, projection glow shifts across pale walls and graphite edges hold their ground. There is little noise. The show invites you to slow your breathing until you can almost hear the dampened hiss of a breeze outside.
Guerlain, the historic Paris perfume house with the bee as its emblem, frames wind as a carrier of scent, trails and memory. That is not marketing fluff. Anyone who has stood downwind of a citrus grove at dusk knows this. The link between air and olfaction is the foundation of perfumery, and Guerlain has backed a range of biodiversity programs in recent years. Lee Ufan, a leading figure of postwar minimalism and founder of Mono-ha, has built a career on attention to space, matter and the interval between things. His Arles art center was always going to prize nuance over noise.
If luxury and sustainability sound like uneasy bedfellows, this is a credible way to reconcile them. Too many brand-supported environmental projects default to slogans or spectacle. Something Moves opts for clarity. Selection by a jury that includes Wenders and Le Bon helps. So does the site. Atelier Ma sits in a city that knows how to host images and ideas, from Roman stone to the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival. The experience here is modest and rigorous rather than loud.
Something Moves runs at Atelier Ma in Arles through October 5, 2025. If you are in Provence, make time. The wind is doing the rest.
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