A haven lies behind these walls.
Landing at this port of call, you leave run-of-the-mill squalls and storms behind you. Even simple words desert you as time expands and you enter a world where only the gift of sight counts – your eyes drawn first of all by the space between the long brown façade and rectangle of close-cropped lawn planted with sculptures. Only then, stripped, washed clean of everyday concerns, can you cross the threshold and wander from room to room where the works on display resonate within you, or not, and time is abolished. Silence imbues the polished brick as the lighting directs your gaze; artworks dialogue with one another, you come to a halt, take off in a new direction and change course again, your hand itching to sketch an approach as your eyes caress a surface, try to understand the matter of its composition, and are lost in dreams conjured up by no more than a fragment. And then words finally come back to you, as your return journey takes a new route.

But describing the place in such fashion would only express a part of its attraction; it would leave out the duo that first created it and, having become a quartet some years back, continue to breathe life into it. With their complementary personalities, ever discreet yet attentive to each visitor, the four accomplices provide the warmest of welcomes, along with in-depth knowledge of the artists on show and the techniques they employ, paying meticulous attention to every detail and inviting music and gastronomy to play their part in inaugurations. Gérard and Sophie Capazza’s newly created utopia was something of an Abbey of Thelema, but it is now their own utopia, held in trust for all of us, whether loyal visitors or just passing through. Loyal? No doctrine other than the sharing of artistic emotions rules here, where Denis and Laura Durand-Capazza are now contributing with such enthusiasm, carrying on with the adventure with as much burning passion as their elders.

From time to time, something of the enchantment omnipresent within these walls makes itself felt in this or that household, thanks to the adoption of a work that has drawn somebody’s special attention, a work taking on fresh meaning from its new context. Would it have drawn such attention in the first place and completed the journey started in its creator’s studio if it had never been on display in Nançay?

And, leaving the gallery, before the clocks start ticking out time once more, who among us does not feel refreshed and revitalised by having been so close to the works it harbours, and by the healing impression this out-of-the-ordinary place leaves of having sprung from another dimension altogether?