Festival Building Beyond 2026
For the 2026 edition of the Building Beyond festival, organized by Leonard, Manifesto curated the programming of three totemic works by Paul Créange, Anaïs Lelièvre, and Recycle Group
Our missions :
- Programming
- Coordination of a one-off artistic event
- Production and installation of artworks
The 2026 edition of Building Beyond explored energy as an essential life force, encompassing physical, human, and creative dimensions. Present in bodies, matter, and territories, energy is movement, transformation, and the capacity for action: it connects, activates, and makes things possible.
The concept of "fertile energies" highlighted the diversity of sources, initiatives, and forms of energy. Whether natural, human, or creative, these energies produce, transform, and generate new dynamics. This abundance, both technical and human, invited participants to view energy as a collective force composed of interactions, flows, and cooperation.
For this edition, Manifesto curated an artistic trail. At the heart of the totemic works by Paul Créange, Anaïs Lelièvre, and Recycle Group lie processes of transformation and regeneration: how materials retain the memory of resources, how living and human systems interact, and how often-invisible forces shape our relationship with the world.
In a context where energy issues are redefining our ways of inhabiting the planet, this artistic proposal envisions energy as a collective dynamic: a wealth of forces to be articulated, linked, and supported to foster new forms of creation, cooperation, and transformation for future territories. This program was accompanied by a selection of photographs, on loan to Leonard from GIP Europe as part of a partnership.
Founded in 2008 by Andrey Blokhin and Georgy Kuznetsov, Recycle Group explores digital landscapes and virtual realities through the use of recycled materials and hybrid imagery. Their work creates tension between seemingly opposing registers, bridging classical references and contemporary culture.
For Building Beyond, the duo presents Laocoon (2021), a sculpture made of transparent plastic mesh depicting a father and his two sons. Instead of struggling with snakes, they are entangled in cables evoking digital networks.
For Recycle Group, the mesh becomes a symbol of a world traversed by invisible flows—data, connections, and the internet—which structure our environments and behaviors. By reinterpreting this ancient myth, the work offers a contemporary reading of the human struggle against information overload and the networks that surround and constrain us.
Paul Créange is a French visual artist whose work explores the interactions between matter, light, and the environment.
His incandescent sculpture, Unburnt bush (2021), appears to be coursing with flows, networks, and an energy that transcends matter. It blends sensors, cables, lights, and industrial waste that the artist recycles, incorporating fragments of photographs via printing. Like stored memories, these photographs bring depth to this hybrid assembly: invisible and abstract traces of the world, acting as reminiscences or souvenirs.
In the dialogue his work creates between the organic, the natural, and the artificial, Créange also includes the surrounding environment, as the work's lumino-chromatic intensity depends on the activity taking place around it.
As part of Building Beyond, Anaïs Lelièvre takes over the Leonard garage with her project Pinnaculum (2018). A graduate of the École d’Art de Rouen and holder of a PhD from Paris 1 University, the artist develops a practice at the crossroads of drawing, ceramics, and installation. Driven by the observation of territories, her work captures transversal dynamics and explores the relationships between natural forms and human constructions.
Originally conceived in 2018 at the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse, in partnership with Cahors Juin Jardins, this evolving installation has since been reactivated in various contexts. Designed as a nomadic and modular form, it anchors and transforms itself with each new implementation. By subverting botanical imagery, Anaïs Lelièvre presents roots extracted from their original environment: severed and exposed, they become visible, almost architectural structures.
The work offers a sensory reflection on space, engaging the visitor's body in an experience that is both physical and perceptive.
Entitled Ressources, un défi pour les villes et les territoires (Resources, a challenge for cities and territories), this year's edition of the festival focuses on the theme of resources, a strong societal issue and a necessary part of tomorrow's world. Among the events offered as part of the festival's rich program, the exhibition Ressources, L'art de la métamorphose (Resources, The Art of Metamorphosis) has chosen to showcase a variety of artistic universes that question resources in their practice.
Manifesto is supported by curator Patrice Chazottes in the artistic direction, coordination and associated production of the festival.
Ressources, l'art de la métamorphose exhibition May 13 to 16, 9:30 am to 9 pm, with works by Chloé Bensahel, Côme Di Meglio, Amalia Laurent, Alec Vivier-Reynaud, WALD City. Round-table discussions with Anna Saint-Pierre, Emile de Visscher and exhibiting artists. Performance Bal(les) by Compagnie Zalataï on Tuesday May 14 at 6pm.
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