Twenty years after the inauguration of the first line, line B of the Rennes metro opened on 20 September 2022. The artistic commission found its place from the design of the newline project. Six of the seven commissioned works were inaugurated on 10 December.
From the conception of line b of the metro by Rennes Métropole, part of the budget was allocated to the order of works of art. This action is part of a long tradition of public artistic commissions in Rennes, initiated since the 1980s. For line b, seven works of art were ordered simultaneously. Validated in June 2016 in the National Commission for the public commission of the Ministry of Culture, this commission aimed to support artistic creation and to provide line b with emblematic landmarks corresponding to the architecture of the stations as well as the development of their surroundings.
To choose artists and works, Rennes Métropole has commissioned an artistic committee.
The latter was composed of:
- Xavier Duroux, co-director of the Consortium, contemporary art center in Dijon, who led the committee until 2017, replaced by Franck Gautherot, co-director of the same institution;
- Sophie Kaplan, director of La Criée centre d'art contemporain in Rennes;
- Anne Dary, director of the Musée des beaux-arts de Rennes until 2019 and his successor Jean-Roch Bouiller, director of the Musée des beaux-arts de Rennes;
- Odile Le Borgne, director of the École européenne supérieure d'art de Bretagne, Rennes site;
- Olivier Lerch, Visual Arts Advisor of the Regional Direction of Cultural Affairs of Brittany;
- David Perreau, art critic;
- Pedro Pereira, in charge of visual arts at the Direction de la Culture de Rennes, Ville et Métropole until 2021.
The works have been selected according to several criteria: their visibility, their proximity to metro users, taking into account the environment in which they are located, their relevance to contemporary artistic creation in the world’s major cities and their cost. Great attention was paid to the maintenance of the works, the environmental impact of their materials and the safety of the users.
Great freedom was left to the artists. The ensemble includes large-scale autonomous sculpture (the works of Ugo Rondinone, Phillip King and Jean-Marie Appriou), a memorial work (that of Camila Oliveira Fairclough), a functional work (that of Valentin Carron), an experimental work (that of Isabelle Cornaro) and a technological work (that of Charles de Meaux), according to the intentions of the artistic committee.
The places where the works are located were chosen in order to mark essential elements of line b. It was decided to highlight its two terminus (stations Saint-Jacques - Gaîté and Cesson - Viasilva), its intersections with the line a (stations Gares and Sainte-Anne), or its infrastructure (tunnel near the station Saint-Germain from the station Sainte-Anne). Finally, particular attention was paid to the artistic enhancement of a station located near several high schools (station Joliot-Curie - Chateaubriand) and a station located in a priority area of the City’s policy, in full transformation (station Gros-Chêne).
For a total amount of €2,039,000, the order for works of art for line b of the metro was financed by Rennes Métropole (€1,650,000), the State (€250,000 through the Ministry of Culture) and the Brittany Region (€139,000).
Consult the press kit: