With the sunlight died and the night above me
To cross the threshold of this exhibition is to enter a space beyond daylight, a chamber unreachable by the sun, severed from the rhythm of the outside world. The act itself resembles a passage, a gesture of surrender. Like cadavres exquis, the mannequins are not whole beings but composite presences, their limbs sculpted from cement and stone, their forms assembled and housed within square alcoves that recall ancient crypts more than display cases. They stand close to one another, aligned not by collection but by mood, by thematic proximity, by emotional temperature. One hovers mid-air, suspended as if frozen in mid-ascension, its skirt’s long train brushing against the glass surface below like a final breath held too long. Perched atop plinths cloaked in felt, they preside over the viewer from above—not as deities to be worshipped but as gargoyle-like witnesses, vigilant and silent, uncannily animate in their stillness. At first, they repel. And then, slowly, they begin to embrace.
Darkness is nearly complete, punctured only by sparse, deliberate shafts of light that fall on vitrines and mannequins like divine judgement. Felt covers the walls, absorbing sound and softening perception, a material both humble and mystical—Owens’ homage to Joseph Beuys, whose story of survival through fat and felt during a wartime airplane crash became, for Owens, a parable of protection and artistic rebirth. These layers of reference create a sacred texture, a suggestion that one is standing not in a museum but in a naos—the innermost sanctum of a temple, a space reserved for initiates and gods, unreachable to most, guarded by silence and flame. Rick Owens’ voice murmurs in the background, reciting the exhibition’s captions in French, his words bouncing off the walls, sometimes echoing, sometimes dissolving, as though they too were absorbed into the fabric of the room.

On walls as wide as lovers’ eyes
The visitor is led into a space where the dark veil lifts abruptly and daylight pours in with almost violent clarity. This final hall refuses the murk and hush of what came before, instead presenting the garments in a stark, blinding glow. Mannequins gathered from various collections stand rigid in formation, not in historical order but as though summoned for an unknowable final rite. They neither explain nor evolve; they simply are, held in mid-breath. Their materials bruise the space—pony-skin, latex, draped jersey, spiked leather—all frozen under the relentless pressure of natural light, as if interrogated rather than revealed. In the back, heavy pony-hair armchairs sit against the wall, each one cradling a catalogue of the exhibition, left open and vulnerable, pages fanned like relics waiting to be deciphered. The floor reflects the outside world in brief flashes, but the garments remain opaque, withholding. This room resists narrative, abandons coherence, and dares to replace linearity with feeling. And still, the ritual holds: a choreography of sensation emerges, an alchemy of black, bruised colour palettes, fractured silhouettes, and textures that ache with memory.