The new exhibition presented at the Espace Saint-Michel in Condom celebrates the work of the Mexican icon that 25 artists revisit according to their sensibilities and their techniques.
Espace Saint-Michel loves artists. The installation that has just taken place there and will remain on display until June 26 is further proof of this. No less than 25 of them share the picture rails and every corner of the old church, whose sacred past offers an additional echo to the creations brought together.
Marie-Claude Montané-Séailles and her team often surprise their audience. For the opening of this second meeting of the season, they set the tone from the start by wearing large sombreros for the gentlemen, flowers in their hair and colorful attire for the ladies. A way to make their visitors travel to Mexico, this land in which Frida Kahlo drew her inspiration.
The artistic universe of this one, they are 25 to have reinterpreted it. 25 creators of all ages gathered within the collective of the Pêcheurs d’étoiles of the association Toutain. Their age and their mastery are reflected in their work, but whether it is naive or elaborate, attached to the artist’s culture or to his painful life course, all have known how to appropriate it by offering him a vibrant tribute.
From one canvas to another, passing through the work of this earth, red or blue, they present themselves to passionate disciples worthy of “the school of Frida”. Beyond the representation, realistic or sublimated, of the Mexican artist, they appropriated his messages. Passionate regarding the artist, the president of the association, Andrée Lantié, was able during stays in Mexico to trace the thread of the life of the Mexican icon. From her homes in her mother’s hometown, she brought back a dress, exhibited in Saint-Michel, but also a whole atmosphere that she and her artist friends have installed in Saint-Michel. A culture, with the omnipresence of the garden and their colours, pottery from this motherland, muerte masks… Through discreet informative panels, it is also the life of Frida Kahlo, marked by illness, the pain, the betrayals, the love that is reminded to visitors. A journey that inspired her work, and that Andrée Lantié asked her friends to celebrate. They did it in painting, sculpture, by collages, marouflages, in a dark or colored way. There is no doubt that their vision will inspire that of the many schoolchildren expected in Saint-Michel this month. It should be the same for all those who have the good idea to stop there too.
