Collector's cabinet - La Villa du temps retrouvé

Jérémie BENNEQUIN (1981- )
Ommage – À la recherche du temps perdu
Fonds de l’artiste

Jérémie BENNEQUIN • Ommage – À la recherche du temps perdu

For several years now, Jérémie Bennequin has been developing a unique and fascinating body of conceptual work centred on the ritual erasure of "In Search of Lost Time". “I am seeking the art and the means to materialise ‘lost time’ (both literally and figuratively), and the erasure of Proust’s work struck me as the ‘best’ way to waste my time,” explains the artist. “Taking the time to waste it, even if only a little. That, if you like, is the motto of my work ‘in progress’. For ultimately, and this is one of the lessons of Proust’s "In Search of Lost Time", must we not waste our time in order to, perhaps one day, find it again?”

Inès MÉLIA (1990- )
Page 110, à la Recherche
2022, Huile et pages de livre marouflées sur toile
Fonds de l’artiste

Inès MÉLIA • Page 110, à la Recherche

Inès Mélia’s series “À la recherche” explores the tension between text and visual form, drawing inspiration from Marcel Proust’s "In Search of Lost Time", and more specifically from the volume "The Captive". The artist reimagines Proust’s narrative, particularly the character of Albertine, by transforming the text into abstract and dynamic visual compositions. Using the very structure of the book as her medium, Mélia flattens and reworks its pages to create large painted canvases, thereby liberating the words and creating a space where language, form and colour converge. The paintings are a means of liberating the text, of bringing it back to life.

Takeshi SHIKAMA (1948- )
Contemplation-France : Cabourg #6
2024, Platinum print on Gampi paper
Takeshi Shikama / courtesy Lunn Galerie & Boogie Woogie Photography

Takeshi SHIKAMA • Contemplation-France : Cabourg #6

Through photography, Takeshi Shikama explores the relationship between lived time and perceived time. Like Proust, who linked memories and places to evoke involuntary recollection, he offers a contemplative experience in which space and light become vehicles for emotion. Cabourg #6 goes beyond mere landscape: it is a meditation on the passage of time, evoking the atmosphere of Proust’s walks along the Normandy coast. The view camera, which allows each image to be created individually, contributes to the artist’s quest for slowness. The platinum-palladium process offers a more subtle palette of tones than silver gelatin, lending itself to a sensory immersion in the work.

Louis AUCOC Ainé (1829-1914)
A toiletries set that probably belonged to Adrien Proust, Marcel Proust’s father
entre 1866 et 1887, Crystal, silver, brass, leather
Don Colette Bitker, 2025. Ville de Cabourg, Villa du Temps retrouvé

Louis AUCOC Ainé • Toiletries set

This toiletries set, attributed to the silversmith Louis Aucoc (1829–1914), known as Ainé, comprises two rectangular-shaped bottles, two round-shaped boxes, one rectangular-shaped box, a round-section crystal case with bevelled sides, featuring a guilloché metal lid monogrammed ‘A.P.’ within a scrollwork cartouche set against a buckle-and-belt motif, and a folded brass matchbox covered in leather with a guilloché metal lid, also monogrammed.

This refined set, reflecting the customs and lifestyle of the 19th-century bourgeoisie, probably belonged to Adrien Proust (1834–1903), a distinguished hygienist and father of Marcel Proust (1871–1922).

MAGIC LANTERN (projector)
early 20th century
Ville de Cabourg, Villa du Temps retrouvé

Magic Lantern

The magic lantern is an early image-projection device regarded as one of the precursors of cinema. Invented in the 17th century, it worked using a light source, a painted glass plate and a lens that projected the enlarged image onto a wall. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was used for shows and presentations.

Marcel Proust refers to this object in "In Search of Lost Time" (1913), recalling his childhood and a visual medium much loved by children of the Belle Époque: “To amuse me on evenings when I seemed too unhappy, they had devised the idea of giving me a magic lantern, which, whilst we waited for dinner, they would fit over my lamp; and, like the early architects and master glassmakers of the Gothic era, it replaced the opacity of the walls with intangible iridescence, with supernatural multicoloured apparitions, where legends were depicted as in a flickering, fleeting stained-glass window.”