Contemporary Art Fair
The theme invites the galleries and artists present to react with new creations/works illustrating the plastic power of materials, the richness of the materials used and the artist’s dialogue with the material (combat, fusion).
The study of the material elements that contributed to the development of the work of art is often relegated to the background in favor of aesthetics. The work of art is material: it is made of matter, natural, transformable, manufactured. A material implemented becomes a material (with an intention, a process of transformation with the qualities of material.
Since the 20th century, artists’ environments have moved away from traditional fine arts, its forms and its techniques. Oil, pencil, brush are replaced by cotton threads, steel, feathers, wooden sticks, shapes cut out of steel plates, mirror, shaped with plaster or any other material that the artist sees fit to use. This work can even be duplicated thanks to studied lighting where the shadow cast by the material gives birth to a figure! The artist leaves the materials a form of autonomy, letting themselves be guided by “the intelligence of the material”. This conception of art resonates with the writings of Georges Bataille on the formless and with the Supports-Surfaces artists of the 1970s who reject aesthetics and question the traditional support. Thus Claude Viallat and Dezeuze separate the canvas from the frame and discover the plastic power of the materials.
