This spring, Dragon Hill Sculpture Park will unveil Inhabiting the Landscape House by Olivia Cognet, taking place in the home of architect-sculptor Jacques Couëlle, from May 13th to November 2026.
Cognet inhabits the spaces of the Couëlle house by deploying a series of works specially conceived for the site. Rather than imposing her works onto the architecture, she chooses instead to listen to the house — its cavities, recesses, curved lines, and irregular volumes.
This exhibition extends a central line of inquiry in the artist’s practice: transforming sculpture into a habitable territory, where work and space engage in an intimate dialogue.
Cognet is a sculptor whose work lies at the shifting boundary between art, design, and architecture. Trained in ceramics yet free from any categorization, she develops a sculptural language in which objects become presences — inhabited forms that engage in dialogue with space.
Her pieces — bas-reliefs, tables, sofas, lighting fixtures, or monumental structures — are never conceived as mere functional objects. They appear instead as fragments of architecture, domestic landscapes that invite the body to inhabit the sculpture. This approach finds a particularly strong resonance today in the home of architect-sculptor Jacques Couelle, located in the heights above Cannes, within the Dragon Hill sculpture park.
For this exhibition, Cognet notably created a sculptural tapestry sofa, produced in collaboration with the upholsterer Degut in Lyon. Designed specifically for one of the house’s living rooms, it interacts with the architecture and transforms seating into an inhabitable landscape.
Outdoors, a garden lounge has been conceived as a constellation of massive forms: sofas and seats interact with a group of stone chairs and tables resembling monoliths. These mineral volumes seem to emerge from the ground like archaic fragments embedded in the landscape.
Within this sculptural environment, Cognet’s pieces appear both primitive and contemporary. They maintain a tension between the softness of curves and the power of material, between artistic gesture and everyday use.
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