The medieval heroic fantasy imagery of pop culture inhabits the worlds of today's artists, and the off-center view of the human that reigns there opens up a different approach to the future. The exhibition Berserk and Pyrrhia, presented at Le Plateau and Les Réserves from March 22 to July 20, highlights the circulation of medieval images and their subsequent appropriation, and brings together medieval and contemporary art.

This double exhibition is part of the territorial project of the same name, involving several partner venues in the Paris region.

The image of the berserker, 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, Guts becomes a berserker through his armor. The masterful drawings that animate the story of this manga are brimming with European medieval references, whether direct or inspired by 19th-century medievalist masterpieces, in dark, obscure hues. Pyrrhia, on the other hand, is a butterfly that gave its name to an imaginary island, described in the books Wings of fire (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.

This medieval heroic fantasy imagery of pop culture inhabits the worlds of today's artists. Their off-center view of the human being 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 pleasure of recuperation and do-it-yourself is essential for less polluting and more responsible materials. The exhibition Berserk and Pyrrhia makes visible the circulation of medieval images and their subsequent appropriation, and brings together medieval and contemporary art. Medieval works will be on display at Le Plateau and Les Réserves, thanks to loans from the region's rich heritage collections, while works by contemporary artists will in turn encounter medieval heritage in the region's historic monuments, continuing this intergenerational and transhistorical dialogue.

In a diptych between Le Plateau and Les Réserves, the exhibition displays 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 marvellous, anthropomorphic creatures and medieval bestiary, transporting us into the world of Pyrrhia, underlining the importance of craftsmanship and community ties.

An entire offsite section draws threads from the dense ball of thought constituted by the issues presented at the Frac: rethinking the relationship with nature and the non-human through the revival of medieval bestiary; valorizing or rediscovering premodern knowledge and modes of production, in an autonomy of production; re-examining social relationships around the community; confronting the future of our world and our imaginations with the universes of apocalypse and the marvelous; or analyzing the circulation of images between contemporary pop culture, medieval sources and rereadings across the centuries, particularly in the 19th century.