Crackling Trail is artist Hugo Capron’s third mural, following his work on a gable wall in Saint-Nazaire (Feu d’artifice, 2024) and on an interior wall of the contemporary art centre in Pont-Scorff (Kaboom & Sparkles, 2025).
At the invitation of the villa Noailles, he has painted a series of nine frescoes in the staircase, creating a fireworks display on the scale of the building as you walk up the steps. On the ground floor, the painter builds on the pre-existing flat pink surface to incorporate prosaic motifs of sparks falling in rain. Then, as you move upstairs, the lights turn into stars, the bouquets become explosive, and the colours and contrasts intensify.
This installation is a continuation of Hugo Capron’s previous works, which explore the operative and compositional modes of painting. While this series celebrates a desacralised liturgy of painting, its simplicity is challenged by the exuberance and brilliance of the motif. Following the trail of sparks and bunches of light, the eye is seduced by the simple, naive spectacle of the bonfires that blossom on the walls of the villa Noailles. With a certain irony, Hugo Capron mocks the intrinsic artificiality of painting, as well as the fleeting nature of the interest it arouses.