Outremonde is a series of living exhibitions initiated by Théo Mercier in 2021. Like a “gray zone” where the white cube of the museum meets the black box of the theater, this series of exhibition-performances brings together for the first time the artist’s two practices as sculptor and stage director. The first project, presented in 2021 at the Collection Lambert in Avignon in collaboration with the Festival d’Avignon, served as a pilot for a three-part series that continued the following year with Outremonde II – Dream hunters at Luma Westbau Zurich (2022), then Outremonde III – The sleeping chapter at the Conciergerie in Paris (2022).

Using locally sourced and borrowed sand, Outremonde is a metaphysical tale of childhood, metamorphosis and the creative powers of the imagination. In this landscape sculpted entirely from sand, we encounter sleeping dogs, the foot of a colossus, a dissolving Gothic ruin, a devastated forest… Outremonde stages the museum’s architecture as if it were an inner landscape, a vessel beneath the surface of the world, a survivalist bunker in an uncertain future, or a laboratory for the recollection of memory whose heart beats to the rhythm of a hermetic matrix.

Gliding from deserted landscape to living landscape, a series of performances in the guise of a psychedelic, initiatory tale explores the mystery of the exhibition. The public, guided by an omniscient child, will embark on a sleep tour punctuated by somnambulistic encounters, in the manner of a tarot reading. By adopting a child’s point of view of the world, Outremonde gives substance to the knowledge and fears that lie deep in the psyche.