Hortus conclusus, the enclosed garden

Mimmo Paladino is the author of this... strange beast at the museum of contemporary art in Strasbourg.

"Without ears, mane or tail, this primitive equine evokes the Trojan horse and the cunning of the Greeks to enter the city. But made of precious materials, hieratic and hoisted on a terrace, this horse is not a wooden horse or a decoy. Recurring in the artist's work, it evokes more the passage from the world of the dead to that of the living, like a psychopump god, who in mythology leads and guides the souls of the dead. Other works by the artist bear the same title and refer to this same symbolism which escapes that of the medieval representation of the Hortus conclusus, that is to say of the Virgin and Child in the garden of Paradise."