Danaë
La Méditerranée
November 29 — January 10, 2024

FetchLooking at the different versions of Danae by Titian, 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? One of the lost variations on Danae remains the most subversive as it survives in a copy by David Teniers the Young. The lesson or tale to be taught is the same whereas the interpretation of it might differ, in terms of class, ethnics and moral. The tale is the one of wealth and creation, dangling between notions of glory and corruption, the economics of desire.

 Danaë by La Méditerranée, reimagines the myth of Danaë and Zeus, where Zeus transformed into golden rain to reach her. Created from lead by a minting machine in situ, it bridges mythology with Fleet Street’s history of minting and London’s financial heritage. A suspended silver birch trunk, marked with a carved lightning bolt symbolizing Zeus, swings on chains to imprint lead plates, creating through impact. The industrial material and mechanical production reflect on themes of transformation, value, and the intersection of ancient myths with modern systems of production and exchange.

La Méditerranée is an exhibition-oriented research group founded in 2020 by Ulysse Geissler, Mateo Revillo and Edgar Sarin. For the past ten years, each of them has been working on generating specific ecosystems within exhibition processes. La Méditerranée considers the exhibition as an active system, seeking to shift from a classic method of presentation to an experimental and dynamic one. For this occasion, La Méditerranée has created a minting machine as part of a corpus of architectures inspired by the local context and landscape. Danae will join a greater collection La Méditerranée has conceived and built over the years in its exhibitions.

The sole purpose of La Méditerranée is to gather this collection of architectures at a certain point in the future, expecting it to grow into a village bearing the possibility for a small family size group of humans to inhabit.La Méditerranée has been present in Venice, Rome, Turin, Kassel, Paris, Moscow, Tokyo, Mexico, Barcelona, Madrid, and London for the first time.