‘The exhibition is a space for action and the works that we gather are the first intuition of it’' states La Méditerranée, the Paris-based collective in their website manifesto ‘...an organism that is constituted by porosity and rugosity, intimately linked to its context and therefore it never responds to a theme and its start is its only discourse’.
There’s an undeniably raw beauty in the effortless chic of the collective's latest show, Danaë, an exploration of Titian's serialised depictions of the Argive princess, produced in collaboration with London-based gallery Pusher. The minimalist arrangement showcases two art pieces of nailed sheets of lead (malleable, heavy and toxic metal) with little lightning bolts subtly protruding, almost imperceptible at first bathed in soft yellow glow; alongside, nineteen similar pieces but smaller and confined to wooden frames, and a conceptual statement of a centrepiece: a birch trunk suspended by a metal chain.
Installation images courtesy of La Méditerranée via Instagram
It feels instinctively spontaneous, yet underpinned by a depth of research and knowledge. The show bridges a profound understanding of art history with a refreshing approach to conceptualising an exhibition that isn’t just static but exists as an active, living body of ongoing production. The show feels tasteful and immediate, much like the coat-over-tailored-suit crowd at the late November private view or one of the artists embodying that new-wave classic aesthetic, with lit cigarette in one hand and a beige wool jacket in the other, explaining to me: ‘When the exhibition begins, we never know what will happen next. It’s almost a tactical use of improvisation - like jazz’.
Danaë (open series), 2024, image courtesy of Pusher London via Instagram
La Méditerranée is an exhibition-focused research collective founded in 2020 by Ulysse Geissler (b.1990), Mateo Revillo (b.1993), and Edgar Sarin (b.1989). Both have spent the past decade exploring the ways of creating distinct ecosystems within the exhibition frameworks, delving into the intersections of architecture, space, and experience. Hailing from Paris and being present in Venice, Rome, Turin, Kassel, Moscow, Tokyo, Mexico, Barcelona and Madrid, the group comes to London for the first time - to cut down (legally!) a birch from Hyde Park and turn it into a minting machine, in action within the low-ceiling underground space of Pusher, an exhibition space founded by a Courtauld graduate duo Henry Pride and Alexander Bokser.
Pusher’s curatorial approach is rooted in collaborative, research-driven exhibition making. Their recently opened space in Lincoln’s Inn Fields is dedicated to working on site-specific projects, fostering new, dynamic environments with artists across different calibers and practices. Previously nomadic, Bokser and Pride worked closely with Ruskin School of Art students and graduates, three pop-up exhibitions of painting, sculpture, and installation. This ethos continued with Danaë, a collaboration with La Méditerranée featuring Matteo Revillo, a 2015 Ruskin graduate. The collective seeks to push further away from the traditional role of an exhibition, refusing to treat it as a simple container for static presentation of objects of contemplation. Here, the show becomes a playground, a site for creating dynamic architectures that are as much a part of the conversation as the works themselves. They are immersive environments that demand to be inhabited, both physically and mentally, and in themselves becoming living, evolving entities.
Danaë, the UK debut in the group’s corpus, is a case in point. The myth of Danaë weaves a tale from Greek mythology, of prophecy, power and inevitability. Forewarned that his daughter’s son would spell his doom, King Acrisius sealed Danaë in a bronze chamber - an exquisite prison designed to defy destiny. Yet, fate finds its way; Zeus, transformed into a golden shower, reaches her, and Perseus is born. Fearing the oracle’s prophecy, Acrisius cast Danaë and her baby adrift in a wooden chests, but they survive, landing on the shores of Seriphos. It is a tale of confinement and transcendence, where beauty and violence are intertwined - a narrative imbued with transformation and fatalism.
From left to right: Titian, Danaë, 1544–1546, (the original version in Naples), Danaë with Nursemaid or Danaë Receiving the Golden Rain, c. 1560s, (Museo del Prado, Madrid), Danaë, 1564 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna)
Started back in 2018, the initial research for the series began as an exploration of Titian’s iconic variation on Danaë, delving into its evolving interpretations. ‘Looking at the different versions…one notices a structural variation in subject, yet composition remains. What about skin’s fade? What about the help? What about the colours of the curtain, the platter, the bed?’ – the trio asks their audience these rhetorical questions not to seek the direct answers, but instead to consider how a fixed composition can yield endless reinterpretations.
At the very heart of this inquiry lies a confrontation with fate, freedom, and the absurd, drawing upon the myth’s oscillation between mortal agency and divine inevitability. The tension between personal freedom and eternal forces becomes a central motif, translating the Nietzschean concept of eternal recurrence: as the tree gently swings from side to side hanging in the middle of the gallery space, hitting the steel, minting lightning-shaped silhouettes, Danaë’s narrative - cyclical, yet ever-evolving - serves as a metaphor for human search for meaning within predetermined structures.
Installation images courtesy of La Méditerranée via Instagram
The minting machine as the centrepiece of Danaë further expands La Méditerranée’s ongoing exploration of architecture as both a conceptual and physical response to local landscapes. Drawing directly from its London context, the birch trunk - straight from Hyde Park - mirrors the cyclical process of artistic production, destruction, and renewal. Like the myth it reimagines and the four versions of Titian’s Danaë, the machine interrogates the interplay between permanence and transformation, where structural consistency meets evolving interpretations.
The show is not simply a presentation but part of a larger narrative: the collective’s ever-growing collection of architectural works, each responding to the context in which it was created. Envisioned as a future village, this collection is designed to form an inhabitable ecosystem. This is perhaps a utopian experiment in art, but as La Méditerranée themselves put it, ‘beauty is a generator of sense, a generator of political and social harmony: beauty is ecological.’
Arina Baburskova is a London-based writer and art journalist, with a focus on contemporary art and fashion.
