16/6/2000
Le Printemps de Cahors
citta', Cahors
30 expositions d'Art Contemporain, 30 artistes internationaux
présents à Cahors, 4 parcours nocturnes,
4 soirées nomades.
"Sensitive" looks at the way in which
artists explore the world of the sensorial
and the sensual through fixed or moving
images, or in a dialogue between these
and other media.
What is meant here by Sensitive is a
relation to the world that emphasises the
elements of sensation and emotion and
is rooted in corporeality rather than in
reason - or an attempt to attain the
uncertain, imperceptible parts of the self
and the world. Sensitive therefore offers
visitors events and experiences that
elude verbalisation and often reach out
to the senses by means of images
sometimes combined with objects or
sculptures, or even such materials as
sound, light, breath or food. The
exhibition offers visitors a real visual and
sensorial experience, allowing them, in
Fernando Pessoa's words, to "feel
everything, in every possible way"; to
activate and regenerate their sensations.
Sensitive also probes artists' own
creative toing-and-froing between
percept and concept, between the
moments when the work takes root in
sensation and continues through
reflection and vice versa - thus going
beyond the dialectics of the sensible
and the intelligible.
As we move into a new millennium,
these considerations fit into a wider
awareness of emergent new forms of
sociality.
In a society struggling to get to grips
with the dominant economic model, the
aesthetic and cultural spheres are
playing an increasingly central role.
This is because, on the one hand, the
individual is suffering from the atrophy
of self-sensation and, on the other,
because of the increasing prominence
of what Michel Maffesoli (who has
contributed to this exhibition with his
interview in the catalogue) calls a "logic
of sensuous reason". Sensation (with
music and sport), affect, emotion and
the present moment are re-emerging as
essential values at the dawn of the third
millennium.
Artists are contributing to this synergetic
implementation of reason and the
senses by creating works that reinforce
the feeling of the here and now and that
restore the beauty of experience.
Beyond this we may find more political
considerations, in the sense of the
individual as active participant in the
life and functioning of the city,
and in particular an ecological
concern, a close attention to material
aspects and a desire to forge links with
viewers.
Sensitive presents a selection of 32
French and international artists, taking
a prospective, cross-generational
outlook.
Thanks to numerous coproduction
agreements, many of the works shown
here are being seen for the first time.
Like the 1999 Printemps, Sensitive is
organised in two sections, Inside and
Outside, with exhibitions on ten
different sites from one bank of the
River Lot to another, plus a score of
new projects distributed along the way.
As part of the event Fabrice Hybert, a
French artist and prizewinner at the
1997 Venice Biennale, has been
commissioned to produce a major and
permanent public work in Cahors, Les
Arbres fruitiers dans la ville, which will
go on developing in coming years.
Christine Macel, curator of exhibitions
Le Printemps de Cahors
220, boulevard de la République
92210 Saint-Cloud
tél : 01 41 12 80 50 - fax : 01 41 12 80 51