There is always something for the visual art lover here in Torrevieja.

This week I visited two exhibitions both in their different ways, stimulating and enjoyable.

The Labyrinth of Sculpture Centro Cultural, Virgen del Carmen.

Mar Garcia Torregrosa, the Directora of the Municipal School of Art, has put together an exhibition of work by her students into a fascinating, even ingenious theme. The works, all on a large common scale, are attempts to fuse the three dimensional form of sculpture onto a two dimensional surface with the plastic freedom of expression of painting. It is a daunting challenge which is very successful in some of the works on show but much less so in many others. In a sentence these are paintings to a strict format of sculpture.

I found many of them interesting and satisfying, but my favourite was the work by Luis Alarcon (49) a painting powerful in colour and form and texture, a painting which suggests and prompts rather that stating in a formal sculptural way.

The Directora also provided an extremely attractive and helpful little catalogue of the exhibition. In such a small gallery she manages to pack in a remarkable number of these quite large scale works. I recommend it to you.

La Obra Oculta del Artista Torrevejense, Sueños y Fantasias (The Supernatural Work of a Torreviejan Artist, Dreams and Fantasies) Sala de Exposiciones, Vista Alegre.

Vicente Solano is a local boy, well he is 80 now, is self taught and after painting for 50 years is continuing to produce powerful, imaginative and very personal works of art in acrylic, oil and pottery. It is possible to compare his work to Bosco, Dada and other surrealist artists. But I guess Solano would consider all that to be of no importance. He expresses his own unique vision of the world of the fantastic. Much of it you may not personally like. There was much that I couldn’t really appreciate. But his statements are so visually clear and definite that they are well worth seeing.

Brian Heard