Contemporary and medieval art
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
With artworks by: Nils Alix-Tabeling, Carlotta Bailly-Borg, Jacopo Belloni, Bernard Berthois-Rigal, Camille Bernard, Peter Briggs, Aëla Maï Cabel, Rose-Mahé Cabel, L. Camus-Govoroff, Pascal Convert, Mélanie Courtinat, Parvine Curie, Neïla Czermak Ichti, Corentin Darré, Caroline Delieutraz, Mimosa Echard, Frederik Exner, Héloïse Farago, Teresa Fernandez-Pello, Alison Flora, Lucia Hadjam, Laurent Jardin-Dragovan, Nicolas Kennett, Agathe Labaye & Florian Sumi, Lou Le Forban, Liz Magor, Pauline Marx, Ibrahim Meïté Sikely, Philippe Mohlitz, Raphaël Moreira Gonçalves, Léo Penven, Théophile Peris, Jérémy Piningre, Agnes Scherer, Cecil Serres, François Stahly, Wolfgang Tillmans, Gérard Trignac, Clémence van Lunen, Xolo Cuintle and Radouan Zeghidour.
The medieval heroic fantasy imagery of pop culture inhabits the worlds of today’s artists. The off-kilter vision of the humans that rule provides them with a different approach to the future. In the contemporary works on show at Le Plateau and Les Réserves, a return to the land, magical parables or straw huts, enchanted or evil humanised animals and insects, appear in turn as fantasies or fears in a world drowning in uncertainty. Not to be outdone, the apocalypse, a recurring motif in medieval art, and its monstrous or dreamlike bestiary are also represented. Love, friendship and social interaction are imbued with these ancient models, which have been transformed by the contemporary gaze. The joy of recycling and the DIY approach are also evident in the use of less polluting and more sustainable materials. The Berserk & Pyrrhia exhibition illustrates the influence of medieval images and their subsequent appropriation, as well as forging links between medieval art and contemporary art. Medieval works are on display at Le Plateau and Les Réserves, thanks to loans from the region's rich heritage collections*, while works by contemporary artists, in turn, engage with medieval heritage by appearing in the region's historic monuments, continuing this intergenerational and transhistorical dialogue.
In a diptych spanning Le Plateau and Les Réserves, the exhibition explores various forms of hybridisation. At Le Plateau, in the spirit of Berserk, and regarding 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, their references are rooted in fantasy, anthropomorphic creatures and medieval bestiary, transporting us into the world of Pyrrhia and emphasising the importance of artisanship and links with the community.
A separate off-site programme draws on the dense web of ideas that make up the themes presented at the Frac: rethinking the relationship with nature and the non-human through the revival of medieval bestiary; valuing or rediscovering pre-modern knowledge and production methods, with an autonomy of production, etc.; rethinking social relations concerning the community; exploring the future of our world and our imaginations in the context of apocalypse and the marvellous; or analysing the flow of images between contemporary pop culture, medieval sources and reinterpretations across the centuries, particularly in the 19th century.
Exhibition produced in collaboration with the Musée de Cluny—Musée national du Moyen Âge.
*Loans from Île-de-France heritage collections : ARCHÉA Collection, Louvres, 95 / Collection of the Department of History of Architecture and Archaeology of the City of Paris, 75 / Collection of the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Melun, 77 / Collection of the Musée Bossuet - Cité épiscopale de Meaux, 77 / Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris collection, 75 / Departmental collections of the Musée archéologique du Val d'Oise, Guiry-en-Vexin, 95.
Frac Île-de-France, Le Plateau, 22 rue des Alouettes 75019 Paris
Frac Île-de-France, Les Réserves, 43 rue de la commune de Paris 93230 Romainville
