The exhibition

Two of the major challenges we face in the 21st century are global warming and artificial intelligence. The exhibition Facing the Challenge echoes these critical issues through an immersive installation by emerging French artist Louis-Paul Caron. This installation is a continuation of his Fires series, which places the protagonists in situations ranging from carefree to stunned. We recall of the words spoken by French President Jacques Chirac at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg: ‘Our house is burning and we are looking the other way’. A quarter of a century later, there is no longer any doubt about our collective responsibility for climate change. We feel helpless in the face of fires that have become megafires. To prevent them from happening again, and more generally to deal with natural disasters, we need to focus on the causes before managing the effects. Starting by finally acting and stopping looking away.

The other theme explored by this immersive exhibition is generative artificial intelligence, which is central to the manufacturing processes used by the artist. We often think that technology is neutral and that what matters is how we use it. In the case of AI, it is both the problem – because it consumes a lot of energy – and the solution, given the understanding of complex situations it provides. Not to mention that it changes our relationship with reality and with work. Therefore, it is better to use it to understand it and make it an ally.

Louis-Paul Caron dialogues with AI models, refining his words to improve his images until he achieves the situations he had in mind by merging different styles. In his Fires series, the trees seem to come from 17th - or 18th-century European pastorals, while the action refers as much to American realist painting as to contemporary staged photography. Fire, which frightens us as much as it fascinates us, has a particularly synthetic rendering, giving it an unsettling fluidity. The artist cultivates this je-ne-sais-quoi of artificiality because he seeks to attract our gaze rather than deceive it. He aims to awaken our consciousness so that we may finally reconsider our relationship with the real world and artificial intelligence.

The artist

Louis-Paul Caron is a French digital artist whose work explores the emotional and existential dimensions of our changing environment. Through painting, video, and digital media, he creates contemplative images that evoke loss, denial, and the subtle tensions of the world we inhabit. His practice engages with the notion of solastalgia, the distress caused by climate change, transforming these feelings into visual metaphors. Caron’s works have been shown internationally, including at Art Basel, Seoul, New York, Milan, and Art Dubai. By blending classical painting techniques with digital processes, he captures moments suspended between reality and imagination, inviting reflection on how we perceive, inhabit, and relate to our surroundings. He studied digital arts and cinema at the Design Academy Eindhoven, École Boulle and ENSAD Paris, integrating this training into a practice that bridges traditional and contemporary techniques to explore the present and envision possible futures.

The curator

Art critic and independent curator Dominique Moulon studied visual art at the fine art school (ENSA) in Bourges and holds a PhD in Arts and sciences of the art. Member of the French curator’s association (CEA) and Berlin's Digital Art Museum (DAM), he has been curator for art centres, galleries and fairs in Belgium, China, Dubai, Italy, Monaco, France, Turkey, South Korea and online. Since 2015, he has also been associate curator of the Nemo international digital arts biennial of the greater Paris. Member of the International association of art critics (AICA), he has written numerous articles for collective books, exhibition catalogues and art magazines. He currently collaborates with Art Press, Art Absolument, ArtsHebdoMedias and TK-21, publishes on Art in the Digital Age and coordinates the MOOC Digital Paris. He is also the author of the books Contemporary New Media Art (2011), Art and Digital Resonating (2015), Art Beyond Digital (2018) Masterpieces of the 21st Century (2021) and is currently preparing Art and Society in the age of Artificial Intelligence (2026) for Scala. Dominique Moulon has taught at Paris VIII and Panthéon-Sorbonne universities, been a guest professor at the Parsons School of Design in Paris and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, lectured in Europe, Africa, America, Asia and is a member of the French national network for hybrid arts and digital cultures (HACNUM).

Information

EXHIBITION Louis-Paul Caron: Facing the Challenge.
CURATOR: Dominique Moulon.
MALTA BIENNALE: French Pavilion, Fort St Elmo in Valletta.
PREVIEW DAYS: from 11th to 13th March 2026.
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC: from 14th March to 29th May 2026.
COMMISSIONED: by the French Embassy in Malta.
CO-PRODUCED: by the B&B Riccobono Art of the Future Foundation.
STRATEGIC ADVISOR: Dr Sandro Debono.
AUDIOVISUAL: Studioseven

An event prefiguring MAiiA the Museum of Artificial Intelligence & Immersive Art founded by Bernard and Brigitte Riccobono.

Images & credit

HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES ( 1x1, 3x2, 3x4, 16x9) PHOTOGRAPHS ( 1x1, 3x2, 3x4, 16x9) : Louis-Paul Caron, Fires series, 2026, immersive installation, variable dimensions, generative artificial intelligence, detail. Malta Biennale, French Pavilion, Fort St Elmo in Valletta, 2026.