ODES TO THE PEOPLES OF THIS WORLD

In 1978 in Lyon, in the cold room of a former cheese factory, Gérard Bourgey and Alain Garlan founded Frigo with other artists, a place which would develop intense international activity, which the Mac Lyon reported on in 2017 with a retrospective: GENERATION FRIDGE. Today, faithful to the values ​​of the original fridge, they perpetuate a libertarian dandyism committed to the practice of a joyful and demanding aesthetic of existence. Invited by the 17th Lyon Biennale to “evoke, question, pursue the subject of relationships that are formed and dissolved between beings and with their environment”, they composed portraits of women and men in the simplicity of their existence. and their imaginations. Painted canvases, recomposed photographs, literary fictions, books, the objects exhibited reveal their love of the ancient arts of painting and writing. This return to traditional techniques is not a renunciation, but a vital breath after years devoted to taming the emptiness of black boxes or inhabiting immaculate museum volumes. Even as the cannons roar, it seems essential to them to sing about the beauty of the world and the beings who populate it. Doing so with the modest tools of color and language is a tribute to the patient work of the anonymous artists who adorn temples, schools, caves and cliffs, as well as those whose poems light up the streets, fields and bedside books.