Last year, the "Salon Environs" took its first steps in the artistic and cultural life of our city at the municipal library. Its aim was to show the various trends in contemporary art as they are developed in the provinces. It was a link in a vast chain that snakes through France, from Nice to Bordeaux, from Limoges to Montpellier, from Lyon to Tours.
Here, it was the young "Groupe 37" that was in charge and responsible.... About forty participants - convinced - from various centres, spontaneously contributed their precious help, all the more so as the ambition was great.
This first exhibition was a real success and the organisers had good reason to be satisfied.
Far from being rejected, "Environs" has now become a part of our city. It has even grown in quantity - 85 participants - and in quality.
In addition, instead of offering a single event at a single location, the exhibition is taking place on three fronts. The reason for this expansion is of course to reach the widest possible audience, but also and above all to raise awareness of environmental 'concerns', a word that the government itself has just put on the agenda.
Thus, in the municipal library - on the 2nd floor - one can appreciate a vast panorama of the various researches carried out by different groups of young visual artists such as the A.B.C. group, Productions of Montpellier, Groupe C.A.P.A. (Centre d'Art Plastique d'Aquitaine) or the Barrade, Julien, Martinez groups of Limoges. There are also essays by individuals such as Baré, Belleudy, Edna, Ben, Cadere, Mouvant, Orillon, Poli.... Come to "endorse", at the national level, the works of Tourangeaux Bacara, Bregeaud, Boutillon, Callandre, Lemerre, Maj, Pagé, Swann, Valentiner, Vincent...
At Place Foire Le Roi, No 10, we find the application of this research in an "organised environment".
It is the Solstice group, from Vierzon, which has taken responsibility for this. Led by the painter Bernard Jund, it offers us a surrealist "atmosphere" on the theme of Eroticism, to which the texts of the poets Henri Gutton and Pierre Lauberty add their power of suggestion.
On the banks of the Cher, in the hall of the foyer des loisirs éducatifs, recently fitted out as an exhibition room with the help of "group 37", we find an "improvised environment" based on certain works by Collandre, Milan, Divi, Saint-Louis, Le Merre, the A.R.P. group, Swann, Valentiner and Van Holthe.
One may or may not agree with such works, but one cannot deny the interest of the concerns they express and one must acknowledge the merits of "Group 37" which, by placing our department at the very heart of the problem, is trying to sensitise - in its own way - public opinion to one of the great dramas of our civilisation.
M.T.
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