A giant locust, a roaring lion coming out of a painting, a female creature made of plastic bottles or even this immense unicorn. This is not a Prévert-style inventory on acids but Denis Lavoyer’s Noah’s Ark, in La Petite-Pierre (Bas-Rhin), in the heart of the northern Vosges regional natural park. Its Relais des arts is a museum, or rather a cabinet of curiosities, entirely dedicated to the septuagenarian’s passion for animals.
This scientist-artist trained in Fine Arts in Dijon (Côte-d’Or) and in Paris in the 1990s. “I was hired as a restorer for Historical Monuments,” he says. It was while working for the church of La Petite-Pierre that I had the idea of leaving Paris to settle in Alsace. » In addition to the restorations, this Parisian was contacted to imagine theater sets but also works for exhibitions.