La Demeure du Chaos

Is he a brilliant artprice expert leader, a leader of data bases on the art market, or a delirious creator of 80-ton sculptures? Thierry makes no bones of his maniac-depressive psychosis and is both of these. His artistic dimension has taken on a media and polemical dimension following the creation of the Abode of Chaos, an open-air museum made from the transformation of his manor in the Lyonnais countryside at Saint-Romain in the Mont d’Or. It caused the wrath of the local authorities, as it became a non-identified object combining plane carcasses, graffiti, mountains of welded steel, giant skulls and neon lights that pierced the night. It may be obscene or a cathedral of future times, a cousin of the Facteur Cheval? Over 100 000 persons visit the Abode of Chaos each year while the process is extended (the Court of Appeals ordered its destruction on 15 December 2009), and went all the way up to the European court of Justice which should soon give its verdict. This book is as out of the ordinary as the place it describes: 504 pages, 4.5 kg. Impossible to ignore it in a library …

• La Demeure du Chaos, 2013, 504 p., €29.90