ORA

ORA opens the door of the emblematic oratory chapel of Nemours’s castle to contemporary artists.

SABR – FRIEDRICH ANDREONI

For its first exhibition, the Fondazione has invited the Italian artist Friedrich Andreoni to present Sabr, an original site-specific sound installation, titled after the Arabic word “sabr” (صبر), meaning “patience” or “ability to calmly bear adversity”. This very word, was Andreoni’s starting point for a reflection on our imminent need for resilience.

First investigated through his piece 40 times Sabr (presented at the Bisonte Foundation in Florence in 2024), the artist had for this work engraved the word sabr on a surface, then erased and rewritten it forty times, until the hand was physically exhausted. Each trace, each erasure and each re-engraving not only documents a repetitive gesture, but also makes visible the dialogue between body, mind and matter. Inviting the viewer to reflect on human endurance and vulnerability : the gesture of repeated engraving becomes a metaphor for existence, where every
attempt to leave a mark comes up against the possibility of erasing it, while the process itself becomes a bearer of meaning and testimony.

For ORA, the artist imagines a new way of giving form to this very word by creating an in situ sound installation. Here, Sabr takes shape through a magnetic tape that loops around the oratory room. On this tape, the voice of a Palestinian muezzin pronouncing the word sabr is recorded. The sound is stretched to leave only its vibratory trace. With each new passage, and throughout the installation, the tape gradually disintegrates….

This invitation has given rise to a wider presentation of the artist’s work at the Picardeau, for a Déversoirs, in the Fontainebleau’s castle and the cinéma Ermitage, in February 2025.

Friedrich Andreoni is an Italian-German artist born at the turn of the last century, who grew up between the Middle East and Europe. He currently lives in Berlin. Friedrich Andreoni’s research explores the sculptural and psychological dimensions of sound and matter. Through various media, including sculpture, sound, performance and video, he explores how these volumes inhabit the memory of space and time, moving between emission and reception, event and trace, signified and signifier.

The project ORA was born of a desire shared by the town of Nemours, the director of it’s castle (Château-Musée) Jérôme Fourmanoir and the Fondazione, to open up the local heritage site to contemporary creation. This dialogue is taking place – and rightly so – in the oratory of the Château-Musée, where the artists’ works resonate in a unique architectural setting whose delicacy and verticality invite to contemplation. The space will successively be curated by the Fondazione, Jérôme Fourmanoir and the FRAC Île-de-France, (the local institution that collects, distributes and supports contemporary art in France and abroad). The exhibitions in the oratory, from now on dedicated to contemporary art, will coexist with the permanent collections and the museum’s temporary exhibitions throughout the year.

The word “oratory” is borrowed from the latin christian “oratorium”, itself derived from “orare” : “to speak”, then “to pray”. It seems to have settled down to define a space dedicated to prayer with the creation of the oratorian order by San Filippo Neri in the 16th century. This rich term, opens up the vibratory lexical field of speech, and particularly of speech as prayer. While retaining a phonetic link, the shorten word ORA got stripped-of its religious context and linked it to the Italian word “ora”, which means “now”. These three letters tend to express the shared desire to give space to the words of artists of our time.