“The Strange Summer. The Journey to Nantes”: when the city reveals itself

Review This 2025 edition, marked by strangeness and synonymous with a passing of the baton for its director Jean Blaise, once again reserves its share of humorous, poetic or political summer creations in the city of the Dukes of Brittany.

By Julien Bordier

Published on July 19, 2025 at 11:00 a.m.

“Latest Version”, a reinterpretation of the fountain in Place Royale, by the artist Willem de Haan. — "Latest Version," a reinterpretation of the fountain in Place Royale, by artist Willem de Haan. MARTIN ARGYROGLO

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Before leaving the wheel of the VAN (Voyage à Nantes), Jean Blaise, the man who awakened the city of the Dukes of Brittany with his cultural fanfare (Les Allumées, Estuaire, le Lieu Unique, etc.), delivers his latest surrealist interpretation of the city by placing the urban artistic trail this year under the sign of strangeness ("l'Etrange été," a play on words). This edition once again reserves its share of humorous, poetic, or political summer creations, like this battalion of rangers climbing the stairs of the Hermitage. At the head of the military procession, a pair of red clown shoes. "Le Bruit des bottes," by Romain Weintzem, evokes the rise of extremism behind the grotesque of certain leaders. Further on, perched on the grounds of the Clemenceau high school, five musicians in camouflage uniforms are preparing to initiate a joyful nouba with their brass instruments. With this "Bad Troupe", Romain Weintzem, once again, pays homage to the Sârs group, this band of students who attended the establishment which, in 1913, announced the surrealist movement: revolt against the bourgeois values of society, questioning of language...

At the HAB Galerie, Gloria Friedmann forces us to reconsider our lifestyles and our attitude toward nature. "How much land does man need?" asks the sculptor, who has long placed living things at the center of a work fashioned from the soil of her Burgundy vegetable garden. Human silhouettes adorned with voluminous spherical heads, figures stupidly advancing toward a funnel with no exit... Gloria Friedmann denounces...