Featuring around twenty modern and contemporary artists from the Pinault Collection, the “Clair-obscur” exhibition journeys from darkness to light through the legacy of chiaroscuro and its resonance with the present day. The museum is transformed into a landscape that is both luminous and twilight-filled, immersing visitors in a reflection on the visible and invisible, where the materiality of light and the shadowy realms of the unconscious come to life.
What does it mean to “see the darkness”? The “Clair-obscur” exhibition at the Bourse de Commerce explores this question by bringing together artists from the Pinault Collection who, from modern art to the present day, probe the world’s shadowy realms while revealing its flashes of light. The museum becomes an immersive landscape where shadow and light engage in dialogue, carrying on the legacy of Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro. This interplay of light runs through the works of Victor Man and the videos of Bill Viola , in which figures slowly emerge from the darkness. More than a technique, chiaroscuro appears here as a universal language that questions our relationship with the visible, the invisible, and the unconscious. Beneath the Rotonde’s dome, Pierre Huyghe’s Camata (2024) establishes a hypnotic ritual filmed in the Atacama Desert. In the Passage, Laura Lamiel presents a series of installations in which color, light, and evocative objects create an introspective universe with spiritual overtones. Curator: Emma Lavigne, Director and Chief Curator of the Pinault Collection
Admission: From €0 to €15
Source: paris.fr — photo: Victor Man, Titiriteros, 2023, Pinault Collection © Victor Man © Adagp, Paris, 2026. Photo: def image.