When driving to Alsace last week Inge and I discussed what would be interesting to see in the other exhibitions in the 13ème Carrefour Européen du Patchwork (alias the 13th European Patchwork Meeting) Val d’Argent.
For one of them, the “10eme Anniversaire” staged by the 5-artist group Textile Impact, it would be interesting for us to see if an exhibition representing few artists working together would be more coherent than an exhibition representing many artists – a subject we have discussed earlier on this blog.
With coherence we meant equal levels amongst artists in terms of expression and mastery of the medium.
So what did we notice? Our impression was that the exhibition staged by the group of 5 appeared harmonious what regards means of expression and artistic mastery. The artists appeared to be at comparable levels of professionalism and evolution. This seems to be more difficult to obtain with a larger group of artists.
One could argue that few artists statistically should have a higher probability of staging a coherent exhibition than a larger group, so our observation in Val d’Argent should not be a surprise.
It wasn’t a surprise, but the observation led to another question: What is the glue that ties a group together, makes it work over many years in terms of mutual inspiration, proactive artistic development and a joint drive to stage good coherent exhibitions?
We do not have experience with working in groups larger than our own 2-person, so we had to guess a little here. The obvious ingredients in that glue must be peer levels in skills and artistic drive. We are not here saying that the artists must have the same way of expressing themselves artistically – opposites in that respect can probably be very fruitful.
We felt, though that there had to be other, less obvious but important ingredients in that glue required for tying a group together and make it work and progress. We identified them as mutual respect and harmony – harmony, at the personal level.
The 5-artist group Textile Impact obviously radiated harmony at the personal level, and it was as if their exhibition radiated this as well. A good achievement!
When driving home yesterday evening from the vernissage of Anne Woringer’s solo exhibition in Saint Jean aux Bois we discussed the subject of harmony in her exhibition. Anne had selected works from the last 10 years, and as a collection they radiated harmony in terms of evolution, materials, techniques and artistic expression.
And in this context harmony does not mean monotony – au contraire!
