À plein volume

À plein volume placed art inside the listening environment of L’Odyssée Musicale, a hi-fi showroom at 5 rue Terrasse in Clermont-Ferrand. Organized by Galerie Chabannes Vallé, the eleven-work presentation was announced from June 25 to December 31, 2026. Shepard Fairey’s contribution was a George Harrison portrait catalogued by the gallery as Poster for Georges, dated 2014 and described as silkscreen on wood.

The gallery’s installation caption locates the framed portrait beside a recessed display of speakers. That makes the venue more than an address: the artwork shares space with equipment intended for sustained attention to recorded sound. Elsewhere, Jo Di Bona’s Pop Hendrix and Éric Lacan’s Marcia Baila provide further links to music. Works by JonOne, Mist, Greg Léon Guillemin, Peter Klasen, Jean Moiras and Kurar broaden the selection beyond musician portraits alone.

Fairey’s original account of the Harrison image adds a useful history. In 2014, he described being invited by Dhani and Olivia Harrison to make a portrait in connection with the reissue of George Harrison’s first six solo albums. His statement emphasized both the emotional range of the music and Harrison’s humanitarian commitments. The artist credited the underlying photograph to Astrid Kirchherr. These details explain the image’s origins; they do not establish that the wood work in Clermont-Ferrand shares the edition size or materials of the paper prints offered at that time.

In this setting, a musician’s portrait can act as a bridge between seeing and listening. Recognition may lead someone toward a remembered recording, while an unfamiliar face may prompt a different kind of curiosity. The portrait does not need to illustrate a particular song to participate in that exchange. Its presence gives a listening room a visible history of musical authorship and of the people whose work listeners return to.

The title, meaning “at full volume,” also encourages a comparison between two forms of attention. Sound unfolds over time; an image can be grasped quickly and revisited in detail. Bringing them into the same room lets those rhythms coexist. Fairey’s tribute is particularly apt because its documented origins combine admiration for a musician with attention to what that musician chose to do beyond recording. The exhibition remained within its announced dates as of October 8; the gallery’s December 31 endpoint is a scheduled closing date.