Wang Du — Défilé — Château de Pierrefonds — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Ends in 4 months: November 6, 2025 → April 5, 2026

Until spring 2026, the event Biens venus! brings contemporary creation into the heart of seven emblematic monuments of French heritage. This project, born from the partnership between the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap) and the Centre des monuments nationaux (CMN), establishes an unprecedented dialogue between contemporary artworks and the history and architecture of the monuments that host them.

On this occasion, the Château de Pierrefonds is presenting Défilé, a spectacular work from the collection of the Centre national des arts plastiques.

Created in 2000 by the Chinese-born artist Wang Du, this work—whose title humorously evokes both a military parade and a fashion show—is particularly emblematic of an artistic approach that begins with appropriating images taken from the media.

Presented in the Guards’ Hall, Défilé resonates with the military history of the monument. Built in the 14th century as a stronghold, the Château de Pierrefonds later housed Napoleon III’s arms collection, which now forms the foundation of the Musée de l’Armée’s holdings in Paris. During the First World War, it became a billeting site.

Wang Du’s work, composed of seventeen painted resin sculptures aligned on a 12-metre-long platform, originates from press images reporting various military activities. Each of these sculptures is, quite literally, a three-dimensional extension of one of these images, with the sculpted elements precisely preserving the original scale ratios and framing. The result is a series of distortions that evoke the way certain contemporary media tend to distort reality.