Regulus

Regulus
An architectural sculpture by Guillaume Aubry
Garden of the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco – Villa Paloma
Photo : NMNM/Florent Mattei, 2024

In 2021, NMNM invites Guillaume Aubry, artist and architect, to carry out a residency in a school environment. At the same time, he is preparing a thesis on the world’s most photographed subject: sunsets. As part of his research, he draws his images from the great works of art history and cinema, from our collective popular visual culture, and from the photos and videos he has produced himself to produce his works, performances and shows. During his residency, the museum invited Guillaume Aubry to design a “folly*” for the Villa Paloma garden.

For Regulus, Guillaume Aubry designed a heliotropic pavilion. He followed the original lines of the Villa Paloma’s antique garden, designed in 1913 by landscape architect Octave Godard, a pupil of Édouard André. The lines repeat and complete the design, recomposing the garden’s historic perspective of alleys and plazas. Ideally located, the semicircular sculpture faces due south and follows the path of the sun throughout the day. A solar oven, located right in the middle of the sculpture, captures the sun’s rays and heats, cooks, boils and warms up the drinks and snacks that will be served there from time to time. A large counter completes the architecture, made entirely of solid bricks assembled in a geometric pattern. The furniture selected by Guillaume Aubry is produced by Atelier Thomas Serruys, Bruges, Belgium.

Regulus is not a museum café, nor a cocktail bar, nor even an agora, but a little of all these things.

*A folly is a building in the form of a small castle, temple, etc., that has been built as a decoration in a large garden or park

Activations

Regulus was inaugurated on Wednesday, July 3, 2024 and publicly activated for the first time on Thursday, July 4 during a “Sunsets” evening, during which Guillaume Aubry and Benjamin Laugier presented the project. The “Hollywood” cocktail from the “Sunset cocktails” recipe book (JBE Books) was served before a performance screening of Billy Wilder’s 1950 film Sunset Boulevard.

In the future, Regulus will be the venue of numerous invitations to artists, chefs, mixologists and restaurateurs, such as artist Eve Pietruschi, who will host the “Cueillir le soleil” workshop for young audiences. Three late openings will activate Regulus this summer. Le Camion Valentin will be offering a selection of antipasti, organic wines and cold drinks from 6 to 9.30pm on Thursday August 1 and 22, and Thursday September 5.

Regulus

Regulus was a Roman consul (-299, -246) tortured by the Carthaginians for treason: he was locked up for thirty days and thirty nights in total darkness, before his eyelids were cut off and exposed to direct sunlight. Regulus is also the subject of a painting by the English painter JMW Turner, which takes up the classic composition of Renaissance paintings, with a sun as the focal point of the perspective lines of a harbour landscape, but from Regulus’ point of view, i.e. through his burnt retina (Regulus, 1828-1837).

Turner, a contemporary of the invention of photography, may be depicting overexposure for the first time. Like Regulus’s eye, the solar oven at the center of the Villa Paloma garden transforms the sun’s power into an energy as sublime as it is incandescent.

Guillaume Aubry, architect and co-founder of the Freaks agency in Paris, is also an artist and graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Paris. For several years, he has been conducting theoretical and visual research into the aesthetic experience of sunsets. He defended his doctoral thesis “Courser le soleil” in 2022 as part of the Radian program. He currently teaches space design at the École des Arts décoratifs de Paris.

Curated by Benjamin Laugier

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