Les petits rien n°4

Les petits rien n°4, n°5, n°6 – 2024 / 2025

 Les petits rien n°4 – 2024 – Exhibition view – Group show, Palm trees also die – Curator Christopher Yggdre – The Elemental, Palm Springs, Californie – © Malo Legrand & Sara Favriau

 Les petits rien n°5 – 2025 – Exhibition view – Solo Show, L’aveu musclé – Galerie Maubert, Paris – © Sara Favriau

 Les petits rien n°6 – 2025 – Exhibition view, Renzo Piano’s Pavilion – Group show, Par quatre chemin – Curators Yvannoé Kruger & Margaux Knight – Chateau La Coste – © Sara Favriau

Les petits rien is a large numbered ensemble comprising several series of very small sculptures. Around thirty works have been produced for each set since 2021. Les petits rien is a long-term project. A serial work-constellation, exponential with time; a long-term world tour will be brought together in a pocket handkerchief, the fruit of various peregrinations across the planet. The Alpilles, the Camargue, the Saudi desert, Palm Springs … Les petits rien catalogues and archives both cultural and natural elements from the soil of each region visited. Hybrid, these sculptures, sometimes tiny, are made from walks in the environment where Sara Favriau is invited. All the materials that the singular localities offer; pebbles, plants, bones, feathers, debris, uses… Where the landscape first appears in the studio in the form of a collection, then reveals itself in an installation. A line of sculptures running along a 10-metre wall. A linear installation that assembles and blends the specific elements of each region: sculptures, some of them tiny, form a local lexicon, settling in a common, linear way; a grammar, whose structure comes from exploitation and the environment.

 Les petits rien n°4 – 2024 – Installation of 25 small sculptures – Here, the installation focuses on Palm Springs and its surroundings: Coachella valley, Yucca valley, Indio and an abandoned Palm Springs golf course. Joshua tree, Washington filibusta palm leaf and wood, Mesquite blackweath seeds, sequoia needles, cartridges, golf ball, feather, figurine boot debris, cactus needle… cholla cactus, shell – 10 m line – H: 1m30 – mixed materials. 

Les petits rien n°5 – 2025 – Installation of 21 small sculptures – From the Canal de l’Ourcq, Stalingrad, Paris to the Parc forestier de la Poudrerie, Sevran – Mixed materials: fragments of graffitied walls, snail shells, seashells, feathers, barrette, fragment of a ball, concrete, iron, porcelain, bicycle headlight, doll’s shoe, beer cap, compote lid, chestnut, elderberry, pine needle, bark… – Les petits rien n°5 traces the towpath of the Ourcq Canal from inner Paris (Stalingrad) to the Parc de la Poudrerie in Sevran, which has been redeveloped into a forest park: from the hyper-urban to the rural outskirts of Greater Paris. Les petits rien n°5 illustrates what characterizes the area, which is both ruderal and the ruins of the old towpath that was used for trade to import products to the capital by boat. Today, the canal has been transformed into a long bike path that passes through Parc de la Villette and Cabaret Sauvage and runs towards Bobigny, Bondy, Aulnay-sous-Bois… dormitory towns that line the canal where people fish alongside swans and cormorants, gradually escaping the hustle and bustle of the city towards the first forest park (a former powder magazine that is currently being decontaminated) in eastern Paris. – Length: 10 m – H: 1.30 m – mixed materials.

 Les petits rien n°6 – 2025 – Here, this installation focuses on the Chateau Lacoste estate, its land and its vines—clay from the estate, acorns, feathers, rifle cartridges, limestone, snail, shells, plastic-coated wire, jute…—10 m long—H: 1.3 m—mixed materials.