We were fortunate to come across a tropical garden and immersive art experience taking place in Miami, at the Raleigh Gardens, which is part of the iconic Raleigh Hotel (one of the many art deco hotels on the infamous South Beach strip, closed for renovation at the time).
The temporary public art installation focused on the works of Claude & François-Xavier Lalanne, known together as Les Lalanne, famed for developing a style that defined inventive, poetic, and surrealist sculpture in the 1960s. They rediscovered the Renaissance art of casting forms from life and employing contemporary electro-plating techniques that explored themes of nature, the animal world, and the living.
Beautifully immersed within the gardens, designed by architect Peter Marino and high profile Miami landscape designer Raymond Jungles (what an amazing name for his profession!), this was a refreshing oasis as we took time out from this vibrant city, but we only managed to capture a few objects on display…
The installation ran between 24 November 2019 and 29 February 2020.
In recent years, Les Lalanne were the subject of a major retrospective at Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris and a large-scale public exhibition at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, Florida. Their work was also featured on New York’s Park Avenue and Getty Station, and in the sale of the collection of Yves Saint Laurent. The work of Les Lalanne has been present in major collections including the Musee Nationale d’Art Moderne/Centre Georges Pompidou, Musee d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, the City of Paris, the City of Jerusalem, the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York, and the City of Santa Monica.