From Ron Mueck to Joseph Beuys, fear takes shape at Ropac Review of the group show FEAR
Fear did not wait for 24-hour news channels, climate alerts, or discourse on societal collapse to make its way into the workplace. For centuries, it has gone hand in hand with war, the disciplining of bodies, everyday humiliations, and visions of catastrophe. What has changed is the speed at which it circulates: the threat now crosses through our screens before it even reaches the door. In Pantin, the exhibition’s title might suggest an inventory of the anxieties of 2026. The works on display, however, present a far longer, and often more unsettling chronology.
A pack, a mirror, bodies on high alert
Ron Mueck doesn't need to explain terror. In Havoc (2025), an installation populated by dogs captures the moment when an animal can become a threat. Ron Mueck's sculptures explore this ambiguous zone between the living and its imitation: the material is still, but the viewer's body anticipates movement, fangs, attack. This isn't a news image. It's a fear that predates newspapers, lodged in our reflexes.
Another trap awaits the viewer with Banks Violette's Mirror Wall (2007). The installation employs a pneumatic device that shatters a reflective surface. One came seeking one's reflection; instead, one encounters its destruction. Between Ron Mueck's pack and Banks Violette's mirror, the exhibition touches upon a fundamental impulse: we can fear what attacks us, but also the fear of seeing our own image unravel. [...]
Turning the weapon against fear
Fortunately, FEAR doesn't simply place threats in a former factory. Some works change the meaning of the violent gesture. In 1961, Niki de Saint Phalle shot at plaster assemblages concealing pockets of paint with a rifle. The painting 'bleeds' under the bullets; the destructive act becomes a method of creation, an attack against the authority of the painting as much as against the roles imposed on women. The Centre Pompidou situates these Shooting Paintings within the history of happenings and the challenging of artistic norms.
The presence of Joseph Beuys's Handgranate (1970), VALIE EXPORT's Aktionshose: Genitalpanik, a work by Oksana Chatchko dating from around 2016, and Minh-Lan Tran's Apologies (2026) opens another avenue: reclaiming the symbols of intimidation, subverting them, and regaining the possibility of action. The program doesn't promise to cure us of our fears. Rather, it shows that fear can be fought with the very tools that seemed to condemn us to silence. [...]
