FERINE CREATURE WILD CREATURE, Exhibition BPER Banca Gallery, Modena

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FERINE CREATURE WILD CREATURE:

Centauri, fauns, myths in the work of Jules Van Biesbroeck and in the modern imagination

From 18 April to 29 June 2025

BPER Banca Gallery

Via Scudari 9, Modena

Open now from 10:00 to 19:00

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The BPER Banca Gallery presents, from Friday, April 18 to Sunday, June 29, 2025, the exhibition Feral Creatures. Centaurs, fauns, myths in the work of Jules Van Biesbroeck and in the modern imaginary, a visual journey that starts from the figure of the centaur to delve into the heart of Western mythology, in a continuous play between symbolism and contemporary reflections on the human condition.

Curated by Luciano Rivi and with the Patronage of the Municipality of Modena, the exhibition focuses on the work of Jules Van Biesbroeck (1873-1965), a Belgian sculptor and painter, whose corporate collection of the BPER Group preserves a core of 39 works, including paintings, drawings, and sculptures. After the first exhibition dedicated to the artist at their own art gallery in Modena in 2019 (Jules Van Biesbroeck. The soul of things, December 2019 - June 2020), The BPER Banca Gallery proposes a new path that explores the symbolist vein of the artist and his ability to address themes related to the human psyche and its deepest impulses through the prism of myth.
The beating heart of the exhibition is the figure of the centaur, protagonist of the painting Centaur killing a deer by Jules Van Biesbroeck (first half of the 20th century) which is at the center of the exhibition path. The work, inspired by a lyric by Gabriele D'Annunzio from the collection Alcyone(1903), depicts a centaur triumphantly lifting the antlers of a deer just captured in a direct reference to the dual nature of the human being. The centaur, in its hybrid nature with a body halfway between a horse and a man, symbolizes the constant conflict between instinctuality and animal vitalism and the rationality that tends to dominate and regulate impulses.

Starting from the theme of the centaur, the exhibition traces the artistic and literary imagery from the 17th to the 21st century. As with the exhibition Psyche in the mirror. Love conquers all, which ended in February 2025, The BPER Banca Gallery has developed an exhibition project that draws from its own collection to shed light on universal reflections on human nature through mythological subjects that also resonate in contemporary times.

This mysterious balance between man and animal, which has always led to questioning one's own condition, constitutes a constant field of investigation for humanity, which still reflects valid reflections on the multiplicity of the self, on the tension between individual impulses and collective needs, on the conflict between nature and culture, between instinct and rationality.

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	opens - closes	last entry
monday	Closed now
tuesday	Closed now
wednesday	Closed now
thursday	Closed now
friday	14:00 - 19:00
saturday	10:00 - 19:00
sunday	10:00 - 19:00

FERINE CREATURE WILD CREATURE:

Centauri, fauns, myths in the work of Jules Van Biesbroeck and in the modern imagination

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