About the work

Stéphane Thidet’s work created for the Ballroom Grove was inspired by American ballrooms destroyed by time and neglect, and which seem to express, through their disarray, the excess of concerts of the past. On a slightly elevated platform that occupies almost the entire area of the former dance floor, Thidet uses frozen elements to recreate the post-Apocalyptic atmosphere of a derelict dance hall. He presents a kind of time travel experience between two spaces that once shared the same function—both dedicated to living and movement—and both now completely fixed in time. Like the crystallised ruins of a bygone era, in which time and celebration seem frozen, chairs, an overturned grand piano, a door, and various architectural elements conjure up the image of an eerie scene at once fragile and spectacular.

About the artist

Born in 1974 in Paris, Stéphane Tidet lives and works in Paris, France.

Stéphane Thidet creates ordinary worlds in which offbeat or off-kilter occurrences take place, giving us a distorted, poetic vision of reality. Inspired by everyday situations, signs from collective memory, or historic upheavals, Thidet’s works allude to an inaccessible yet perceivable drama that confronts the spectator with a “jeopardizing of things”. “What happens when we can no longer trust the things that comfort us?” wonders the artist. Often related to childhood or leisure, his works reveal a certain loss of innocence, a state of concern—and by their inherent tension, they create a sense of agitation, a fertile inner turmoil.

The artist website