It’s an immersive and unusual journey: under the Grande Arche de La Défense, until the end of April, the “salle des colonnes”, usually off-limits to the public, is transformed into a contemporary art gallery with an underwater feel. The exhibition “Sous l’Horizon,” part of the Les Extatiques program, explores the question of abysses, these deep sea beds that fuel mysteries, hypotheses, and fantasies.
A contact with bioluminescent bacteria
Four contemporary artists were entrusted with the keys to this space by the association COAL, which maintains links between art and ecology: Jérémie Brugidou, Ugo Schiavi, Antoine Bertin, and Shivay La Multiple. Plunged into near-total darkness and armed only with an audio headset and a blue light lamp, visitors explore this underground space and have surprising encounters, such as with bioluminescent bacteria that emit their own light.
Not content with just seeing them, it becomes possible, through a surprising yet captivating process, to come into contact with them. Jérémie Brugidou designed this installation as a collaboration with these bacteria. “Bioluminescence is not just about visibility, it’s about visibility, touch, almost smell, maybe even chemical, we’re not sure, it’s associated with all kinds of sensors in photosensitive animals,” he explains.
From monstrous to wonderful
Throughout the exhibition, we thus move from the real to the imaginary, from the monstrous, with Ugo Schiavi’s disturbing and familiar chimeras, to the wonderful, with the spiritual and almost esoteric space designed by Shivay La Multiple. “We start the exhibition with the discovery of phytoplankton,” brought together here by Antoine Bertin, “things that are normally imperceptible,” explains Lauranne Germond from COAL, one of the exhibition’s curators.
Accompanied by a text written by Mariette Navarro and read by musician Emily Loizeau, the exhibition has the peculiarity of lasting a very precise time, about forty minutes, as each step corresponds to a part of the narrative. An accompaniment in reverse of the speed that reigns above the surface of La Défense, which necessitates taking the time for contemplation in an almost meditative experience.
