Berserk & Pyrrhia — Frac Île-de-France, Paris, Romainville — Point de vue — Slash Paris

Exhibition : Berserk & Pyrrhia — Art contemporain et art médiéval from March 22 to July 20. Learn more With an unexpected perspective and an emphasis on the Japanese manga Berserk, which itself transposes a particularly dark medieval Europe into the popular tradition of Japanese apprenticeship narratives, the exhibition Berserk & Pyrrhia offers an ambitious journey, bringing together highly diverse works. These all share a form of imaginative exile, embracing the uncertainties of a time often reduced to a mere transition. Perhaps it is precisely this quality that gives it its unique flavor, making it a fruitful neighbor to our imagination, whose orders, as fluid as they are infused with elementary rationality, foster the emergence of new arrangements. A play of references and translations that speaks to the project’s vast chronological and geographical scope, fully embracing the ambiguities of historical, dreamed, and reinterpreted connections between the contemporary world and a Middle Ages that is revealed as much in its fantasy as in its persistence.

A dual distribution across the two exhibition spaces at Frac allows for a narrative composed in two movements, which nonetheless maintain numerous connections. Far from imposing a definitive categorization, and following the open-ended nature of the selected works, the two curators propose a composition that reads more as sequences, appearing to function as improvised discussions between political concerns. They make invention, in turn, a means of emancipatory license from common sense, an assertion of freedom, or even a necessary tool for survival.

It is precisely in this openness, in the scholarly rigor of its research (in collaboration with the chief curator of the Cluny Museum), and in the almost “geeky” delight of presenting period pieces that serve as markers opening pathways to the reality of these invented times, that Berserk & Pyrrhia is most convincing. Following the impulses of the young artists it highlights, the exhibition explores the human figure as a set of shifting characteristics, never reduced to its biological reality, transforming before our eyes into animal, plant, chimera, or even becoming an expressive landscape itself. Architecture, painting, installations, and modern technological equipment contribute to a shared composition, deploying through form, through the multiplication of sharp angles and deliberate curves, the rigidity of a universe where mere habitation is insufficient to establish a sense of belonging.

Some works strike with their ability to suspend time and, in doing so, inscribe a radical perspective of rupture with our contemporary reality. Notably, Carlotta Bailly-Borg’s “impossible painting,” where the figure of a monk faces a plant; their seemingly obscure union contributes to the narrative reduction of their encounter, ultimately offering far more possibilities than it excludes. Similarly, L. Camus Govoroff’s fountain, filled with references and ambiguities, resolves itself within a self-contained system. Not to be overlooked is the little-known chapel by Parvine Curie, as deep and polysemous in its blackness as it is enigmatic; the jubilant fabrications of Lou Le Forban, which, through the spontaneity of imagination, intertwine a multitude of geographical and historical drawing traditions; the grotesque organicity of Nicolas Kennett’s mole; or the visual trap of Liz Magor and her monumental sculpture supporting a beast of brilliant ambiguity, oscillating between an exhibition totem of power and the fragility of medieval bestiaries, where many animals existed, before their representation, solely through the words of their authors. These major pieces contribute to a deliberately fragmented whole, where stylistic disruptions and imbalances prevent a linear reading and the shortcut of seduction, instead maintaining a fertile dissonance—a perpetual rumbling that, commendably, undermines any dogmatic inclination.

It is this playful dimension, the preservation of creative pleasure in the face of intellectual dead ends, that emerges through the succession of proposals at an intense pace, fostering genuine dialogues between motifs and materials, between imaginaries and practices. A generous and multifaceted vision of an era that can be approached through different cognitive paths, thus opening the way to desires and possibilities that it liberates—ultimately calling for a reinterpretation of the interweaving of man and nature, magic and the organic, and a reclaiming of history to invent a new realm where battles, though more intimate, are no less epic.