PARIS.- The image of the berserker, the legendary warrior, has spawned a number of offspring in film, video games, manga and rap music. In many myths, the berserker is connected to the earth, to animality, advancing without armor. In Kentarō Miura’s work, it’s through his armor that Guts becomes a berserker. The masterful drawings that animate the story of this manga are brimming with European medieval references, whether direct or inspired by darkly hued 19th-century medievalist masterpieces.

Pyrrhia, on the other hand, is a butterfly that gave its name to an imaginary island, described in the books Les Royaumes de feu (Tui T. Sutherland), where reason-gifted dragons reign, depopulated by humans, yet there are small beings walking on two legs with a tuft of hair on their heads, called scavengers. More precisely, this Pyrrhia umbra butterfly is also known as “The Chrysograph”, the name of the writers who created the illuminations in grimoires.

Contemporary and medieval art:

This 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.

A diptych between Le Plateau and Les Réserves:

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.

Off-site:

Curator: Rémi Enguehard, in collaboration with the education department of the Frac Île-de-France, and the teams of the partner venues

A whole section outside the walls pulls threads from the dense ball of thought. To wit:

• Rethinking the relationship with nature and the non-human through the revival of medieval bestiary

• Valuing or rediscovering pre-modern knowledge and modes of production, in an autonomy of production

• Re-examining social relationships around the community ;

• Confront the future of our world and our imaginations with the worlds of apocalypse and the marvelous

• Analyze the circulation of images between contemporary pop culture, medieval sources and rereadings across the centuries, particularly in the 19th century.

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.