The second edition of the exhibition "Force de l'Art" was entrusted to three well- known figures selected for their commitment and closeness to the reality of the artists' work. Three generations, and three singular approaches: Jean-Louis Froment, Jean-Yves Jouannais and Didier Ottinger all wanted to give priority to a direct rapport with the works. To do so, they asked French architect Philippe Rahm to dream up a fresh new architectural offering for the glass-and-steel framed setting of the Grand Palais, one in which all publics could live a direct experience of the strength and energy of the works. To produce a non- thematic space, a terrain for walking freely through the world of art without being satisfied with "just having the art works admired", the curators' project implied an explicit artistic approach, using the space both as a neutral mediator and as the vector of artistic emotion. A place needed to be invented that would be appropriate in a new way, exhibiting without encumbering with meaning nor framing with a reading of the works; rather, simply directly putting the artwork and its public in each other's presence. This ambition resulted in the "natural landscape", a neutral and objective backdrop, stripped of meaning, favouring the discovery of which the conception and completion was entrusted to architect and exhibition designer Philippe Rahm.

"More than an architectural project, we are offering a geological process generated by the force of the artworks themselves. It is first a volume in the space, a certain quantity of substance, a certain rate of reverberation. Our project sets up a process: starting with a parallelogram measuring 160 m by 25 m and of a certain thickness, functioning like a paste which will begin to become deformed, to develop hollows, to swell in accordance with the play of forces which assume a geological language shaping the landscape with tectonic movements, deformations, pressures and depressions, folds. Yet there is no naturalism here; these are abstract forces which are at the origin of the movements and deformations shaping this territory, that of the artworks themselves. At first each artwork is given the same space and volume. And then, depending on their dimensions and the necessary distance between them and the observer, they will begin to push against each other in a movement similar to that of tectonic plates. Depending on their weight and the amount of light required, they will then deform the surface, create hollows, swell it, raise up heights. A white landscape appears, the "white cube" opens up, against which the shapes, textures and substances of the artworks will stand out and be showcased. It is therefore a reversed exhibition space proposed here; it is not the artwork which adapts to the architecture, but the architecture which folds and changes its shape to respond to the demands of the artwork. In this way the artworks are together in a play of mutual pushing and pulling, simultaneous and reciprocal balances, giving rise to the surging forth of the landscape." Philippe Rahm