This artist's thesis deals with the processes of meaning and interpretation of artistic proposals based on the transfiguration of pre-existing images or objects in an artistic context; articulating the practice of art with that of thought, it is composed of artistic experiments presented in the form of a portfolio and a theoretical essay on the place of discourse in the face of visual works in an exhibition situation, and more specifically with regard to the institutional use of the label in the museum. These two parts are complementary and where the practice focuses on artistic gestures of transfiguration of images, the theoretical part questions the processes of (re)signification through discourse. The challenge is to bring these two dimensions of art research into resonance in order to question the (con)textual conditions of artistic reception. Inspired by conceptual art, poststructuralism and American philosophy of art, this work pays particular attention to the variability of meaning, its spectral and shifting character, more a matter of use than of essence, and to the construction of the meaning of visual works according to external determinations beyond or below their formal or internal properties, in the wake of a postmodern conception of art and institutional criticism. This is evident in the gestures of transfiguration influenced by the ready-made and photographic appropriation, which are studied and put into practice in the thesis.

 

This thesis was carried out within the EUR Humanities, Creation, Heritage in collaboration with École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts de Paris-Cergy (ENSAPC) and CY Cergy Paris Université, under the supervision of Jean-François Puff (CY) and Yann Beauvais (ENSAPC). It was publicly defended on November 12, 2024 at the Palais de Tokyo in front of a jury composed of:

 

Françoise Parfait, PR, Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne (présidente et rapporteure)

Christian Joschke, PR HDR, Beaux-Arts de Paris (ENSBA) (rapporteur)

Renaud Auguste-Dormeuil, PR, ENSAPC (examinateur)

Alexis Anne-Braun, MCF, École Normale Supérieure - PSL (examinateur)

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