(In the forest …)
Curators : Laure Delclaux and Rémi Enguehard
Open to the public on May 24 and 25 on the occasion of the Artists’ Open Studios organized by the city of Romainville.
With works by Pierre-Olivier Arnaud, Libor David, Christine Deknuydt, Gyan Panchal and Didier Marcel, from Frac Île-de-France’s collection.
The Léopold Bellan Home for the Elderly in Romainville is hosting a group of works from the Frac Île-de-France collection that evoke the world of plants and forests, inviting us to take a closer look at the symbolism inherited from the medieval world following the Berserk & Pyrrhia exhibition.
The title of the exhibition is taken directly from the poet Charles d’Orléans, who wrote his first verses in such a way as to allow us to imagine the mysteries of a forest that is both repulsive and savage, as well as a source of intense desire and a place of poetic wandering. This positive and negative duality is at the heart of the medieval aesthetic of the forest and continues to foster dark as well as enchanting fantasies from century to century in medieval reinterpretations of the stories that take place there. This dichotomy is rooted in the vision of the medieval forest as being at times impenetrable, but also as a place of life and inexhaustible resources, at the heart of everyday life, serving as a boundary, a workplace, a place of danger and a hunting ground.
The Frac works with the home’s residents in hands-on art workshops based on the symbols associated with the forest, the creatures that inhabit it and the stories that might unfold there. In a creative act that weaves together past and present views of nature, the forest and other sources of wonder, our elderly residents become conveyors of history and talent.
Résidence médicalisée Léopold Bellan, 6-8 Rue des Coudes Cornettes, 93230 Romainville