Berserk & Pyrrhia — Art contemporain et art médiéval — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Starts today: March 22 → July 20, 2025

Curator : Céline Poulin

Associate curator : Camille Minh-Lan Gouin

Scientific advisor : Michel Huynh, General Curator, Musée de Cluny — Musée national du Moyen Âge

Scenography : AGATHE LABAYE • FLORIAN SUMI

Nils Alix-Tabeling, La Vasque Bacille, 2020 — Bronze et tisane de plante médicinale, plume de paon, oeil de tigre, 66 x 82 x 62 cm Collection Frac Île-de-France © Nils Alix-Tabeling

The medieval heroic fantasy imagery of pop culture inhabits the worlds of today’s artists. The off-center view of the human that reigns there opens up a different approach to the future. In the contemporary works exhibited at Le Plateau and Les Réserves, the return to the land, magical parables or straw huts, humanized animals and insects, enchanted or evil, appear in turn as fantasies or fears in a world drowned in uncertainty. The apocalypse, a recurring motif in medieval art, and its monstrous or dreamlike bestiary are not to be outdone. Love, friendship and social relations are imbued with these ancient models distorted by the contemporary gaze. The pleasures of recycling and do-it-yourself make their mark with less polluting, more responsible materials.

The Berserk & Pyrrhia exhibition highlights the circulation of medieval images and their later appropriation, and brings together medieval and contemporary art. Medieval works are on display at the Plateau and in the Réserves, thanks to loans from the region’s rich heritage collections*, while works by contemporary artists in turn come into contact with medieval heritage by taking over the region’s historic monuments, continuing this intergenerational and transhistorical dialogue.

In a diptych between Le Plateau and Les Réserves, the exhibition deploys different forms of hybridization. At Le Plateau, in the spirit of Berserk, and with reference to the more mystical and romantic nineteenth-century interpretation of the medieval period, the works take us on an obscure and dark journey. At Les Réserves, they draw their references from the marvelous, anthropomorphic creatures and medieval bestiary. In this way, they transport us to the world of Pyrrhia, underlining the important place of craftsmanship and community ties.

Caroline Delieutraz, Seed 267, 2021 — Impression digitale sur tissu polyester, matelassage, 165 x 147 cm © Caroline Delieutraz Courtesy de l’artiste et Galerie 22,48 m2

Exhibition produced in collaboration with Musée de Cluny — musée national du Moyen Âge

*Loans from Ile-de-France heritage collections

ARCHÉA collection, Louvres, 95. Collection du département d’histoire de l’architecture et de l’archéologie de la Ville de Paris, 75. Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Melun collection, 77. Musée Bossuet collection, Cité épiscopale de Meaux, 77 Musée Carnavalet collection — Histoire de Paris, 75 Departmental collections of Musée archéologique du Val d’Oise, Guiry-en-Vexin, 95.