Traversée des apparences

Presentation

Traversée des apparences [Beyond Appearances] is the first exhibition dedicated to the New Magic movement, which includes a selection of works by its revival’s most promising and significant artists. Each evokes a mysterious, poetic, and festive visual experience, where resonance and silence respond to the burlesque and the absurd. If magic usually brings to mind the world of show business, this unique exhibition seeks to bring together many magician-visual artists, sculptors of the invisible, ghost tamers, and shadow manipulators in a single journey at La Friche la Belle de Mai.

Throughout this journey through appearances, the magician himself has disappeared…leaving only the interactive or immersive experience of the magic itself. For the power of magic is that it is faceless: it exists before appearance in whatever form it may take. Furthermore, magic, in its common usage, signifies an emotion rather than a discipline. This is what New Magic is all about: reaffirming magic as an aesthetic category in its own right, inviting viewers to contemplate the invisible, and believing in sensible worlds and credible wonders.