Black Périgord: an ambitious contemporary art exhibition reveals the invisible worlds of the National Museum of Prehistory
Visible until January 5, 2026, the exhibition "The Invisible Worlds", created by the artist Aurélien Mauplot, invites you to lose yourself in the darkness of time in order to better feel the invisible and the intimate of our ancient humanity.
It was a triple event that the National Museum of Prehistory (1) of Les Eyzies (Dordogne) hosted on Thursday, June 12: "the opening of the exhibition ''The Invisible Worlds'', the receipt of a public commission [read below] and the launch of the collaborative project ''The museum comes out of its reserve''", says Nathalie Fourment, the director of the museum. With one thing in common: the end of the traveling residency of Aurélien Mauplot, a self-taught artist who has visited around ten decorated caves for inspiration.
"A three-year residency. A timeframe that doesn't happen all that often," says Nathalie Fourment, who describes an artist who didn't embark on "something prefabricated. His approach to creation integrated all of the museum's spaces through a process of dissemination."
In fact, around fifteen works by Aurélien Mauplot are spread across the site, on all media: sounds, paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos.
AmazingThe artist approaches prehistory "through walking, perception and the remains of gestures, traces found in caves which bear witness to a passage," explains the museum director.
An example is the astonishing installation "Gargas," born after a night spent at the museum in 2022. Aurélien Mauplot selected slides by prehistorian André Leroi-Gourhan (1911-1986) taken from the archives. They represent negative handprints, some of which are missing phalanges, found in the Gargas cave (Hautes-Pyrénées). The artist slipped into the images projected on the wall, creating an original relationship between two individuals separated by 27,000 years.
For the collaborative project "The Museum Comes Out of Storage," the 60 staff members selected one piece from the 7 million objects kept in storage to showcase among the 12,500 on public display.
Prices: full, 6 euros; reduced, 4.50 euros; free for those under 26.
(1) With the Dordogne-Périgord Departmental Cultural Agency.
“Jekstàt”, the 3rd public commission in a century "Jekstàt" is a wall installation commissioned by the museum with the support of the Ministry of Culture, as part of its aid for public commissions. It is only the third in a century after the world-famous statue of "Primitive Man", created in 1931 by Paul Dardé, then in 2004 the "Suite of three fragments of light" by Michel Verjux, the three projections of light on the walls of the museum, the castle and on the rock face. Inspired by an experience gained in the production of a work in a rock shelter in Abruzzo, "Jekstàt" is formed by 20 pigment prints on paper: they represent three sculptures formed from blocks of limestone from the Vèze quarry in Les Eyzies, whose surfaces rubbed with charcoal were photographed by the artist Aurélien Mauplot. They reveal the porosity between limestone and charcoal, revealing an original material found in the decorated caves. In Kaweskar, a language spoken in Tierra del Fuego, “Jekstàt” means “the stone that makes fire.”
SudOuest
