CAC Brétigny

Show d’Houdini
11.04—30.05.2026
With: Romain Best, Guendalina Cerruti, Grichka Commaret, Audrey Couppé de Kermadec, Anders Dickson, Adrien Genty, Lucas Erin et Hatice Pinarbaşi

🪄🐰 Opening: Saturday, April 11, 2026, 2–6pm.
Free admission

📍 La Ferme (3, Grande rue), Marolles-en-Hurepoix

Free shuttle 🚗 Paris/Marolles: reservation.cac@coeuressonne.fr
Departure at 2 pm. From 104 Avenue de France, 75013 Paris (Bibliothèque François Mitterrand metro station).

         The Show d’Houdini explores the power of magic as an ambivalent tool: an instrument of manipulation or persuasion, but also a force for emancipation. While many recent exhibitions have explored magic through the prism of the figure of the witch or invisible forces, the Show d’Houdini returns to a context of performance and explores the figure of the show magician — who manipulates, deceives the eye or, on the contrary, reveals other potential worlds — across contemporary artistic practices.

The scenography created by the Italian artist Guendalina Cerruti features a metallic framework enamelled with shiny and colourful beads. These architectural structures simultaneously bring to mind cages, exhibition installations and the world of stage illusions, referencing as much magic as the figure of Harry Houdini. They house the work of seven other French and international artists and seem to simultaneously evoke spaces of confinement, display plinths and staging, between exhibition and show.

Artists and magicians share an often-unspoken desire to transform the world through our perception of it. While in the world of magic shows this transformation is confined to the stage, with the artists it extends beyond by offering possibilities to imagine collectively. By revealing the strategies through which magicians divert our gaze, the exhibition invites us to go beyond what is immediately visible — at least to the eye — to activate other modes of perception. It offers the opportunity to explore other realities: richer, more complex and perhaps also more promising.

Curated by: Marion Vasseur Raluy (Director)
Scientific Committee: Jonathan Naas, Zoé Théval
Scenography: Guendalina Cerruti