Continuation of the series of advice for visiting Lorraine this summer. We first take the direction of the Vologne valley, in Granges-Aumontzey precisely, at the Petite galerie, founded by Francine Page in the old hardware store of her parents. The gallery opens its summer season and welcomes three artists from July 2 to August 21 (Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 2:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.): the painters Sylvie Coupé-Thouron and Philippe Flesch, as well as Sabine Cauvez who produces a work “of sculptures using wire, boxes and installations made of recycled objects”.
Evoking artists’ exhibitions represents a sort of dilemma, the relationship to art being very subjective; each has a particular link with art or with an artist or a work. Difficult, moreover, to put words on works of art. The artists themselves, those who practice, paint, cut, sculpt, draw, weave, do not agree among themselves, without forgetting the opinions, also contradictory, of art critics or writers. For Gustave Flaubert, “art is not a lie”. Balzac said the exact opposite: “who says art, says lies”, just like Debussy for whom “art is the most beautiful of lies”. For some, “art saves the world” (Dostoyevsky), for others “it cannot change life” (Houellebecq). “It simply helps to live” (Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt), perhaps because it “washes our soul of the dust of everyday life” (Picasso).
In any case, you have to go and see this exhibition at the Petite galerie. Everyone will have their own opinion, everyone interprets a painting, a sculpture freely, they travel freely and for free! Art is the freedom to travel. A little friendly advice to finish: you are not very far from the Route des Crêtes (to be avoided on Sundays when it is rather the Autoroute des Crêtes), up there, stop at the Jardin du Haut Chitelet. Artist photographer Michel Friz exhibits there all summer long. His landscapes reveal a very special encounter between nature and animals. “Art is a manifestation of love” (said I don’t remember who but he was damn right), that’s what fits well with the state of mind of Michel Friz but also of Philippe Flesch, Sabine Cauvez and Sylvie Coupé -Thouron… who will have the last word: She sums up well, about her personal work, what we look for in artists: “Each of us can find there, according to his own look, a meaning, a resonance , a window on his inner universe”.
