Une Maison à Saint-Tropez

A passage from Marcel Pagnol frames the exhibition with a reflection on summer sleep – not idle luxury but a physical and psychological state shaped by heat, stillness, and our surroundings. Castanier treats this as structure rather than metaphor, her curatorial model emphasizing material intelligence and spatial pacing. 

Une Maison à Saint-Tropez unfolds like a well-paced novel, with rooms arranged by mood and material, each chapter deepening the sultry atmosphere. Isabelle’s curatorial language draws on texture, rhythm, and warmth, allowing the work to speak slowly and softly, ‘Through this house, I wanted to revive a certain Tropezian art de vivre — simple, sun-drenched, and intimate — reinterpreted by emerging artists and artisans.The siesta, a universal gesture, offers rest, renewal, and sometimes carries us into dreams.’

The exhibition is conceived in three acts, moving from conscious rest to abstraction. Studio de Lostanges opens with a ‘siesta wardrobe’ in collaboration with Atelier Senimo, cut, cloth and hang reflecting bodily ease, translating rest into garment form. Charlotte Juillard contributes pieces that play with support and suspension, while Margaux Toussaint reworks botanical silhouettes in silver, transforming organic detail into weighty, sculptural jewellery.

Elsewhere, Quentin Monge’s graphic textiles mark spatial transitions, offering a contemporary take on the screen or curtain as a framing device. Sculptural furniture by Wendy Andreu and Linde Freya Tangelder holds space with clarity and physical intent, meanwhile Léa Ginac’s ceramics and Natalia Criado’s refined tableware focus the domestic gaze. Picasta constructs more immersive moments, drawing on dream states and their visual language, without falling into pastiche.

A considered approach to scale, surface, and gesture holds everything together, while the house itself – its thresholds, its light, its inherited rhythms – sets the pace. Castanier, trained as an architect and steeped in this village’s layered vernacular, knows how to let the space lead. The result is an architecture of feeling, immersive and intimate, ‘In Saint-Tropez, I am committed to shining a light on the work of these young creators and offering them a true showcase in a place where visitors from around the world come together,’ says Isabelle, ‘It’s a privilege to give them this visibility, and to help preserve and celebrate their craft — the mastery of materials, gestures, and the stories they carry within.’

This year’s cohort also includes Robinson Ferreux, Samantha Kerdine, Paul Bonlarron, Marion Mailaender x Maison Intègre, and the duo Sacha Parent x Valentine Tiraboschi. Rather than a single aesthetic, it’s an approach linking these works: a sensitivity to the small shifts that mark the threshold between waking and sleep. Une Maison is not so much an exhibition as an atmosphere, leaving the guest attuned rather than dazzled, carrying the quiet residue of rest.