Sculpture
Contemporary attitudes, exhibition practices and the mediation of the work
The notion of sculpture has been expanding for half a century. Today it covers a multitude of practices and media (volume, performance, video, installation, new technologies, etc.). The unique characteristic of sculpture is to question, through the work, the place of humanity in the world, not solely in a relationship of interpretation (semantic and metaphysical reading), but in placing the viewer opposite it in a reading and experimentation situation which is three-dimensional and spatial. To be able to have a complete idea of it, sculpture and installation thus ‘oblige’ further points of view to be added. While experimenting with new media and contemporary practices does not rule out exploration, learning and the use of traditional practices (modelling, casting, assemblage, wood and metal), the most contemporary attitudes and forms are encouraged in projects which combine work in the studio within the school (supervised by artist teachers and actors from the world of contemporary art), mediation of the work and exhibition practices in the context of mostly extramural projects whose place within the curriculum has continued to grow in recent years.
The Department
Personal research begins during the first year. The space is both a crucible and a lab, a space for possibilities and experiments, a microcosm of the art world where plastic practices are developed, shown, analyzed and criticized. Students are encouraged to be there as much as they can during their first year.
PROJECTROOM/ The “hanging” room
One of the rooms in the Sculpture Department is used as a “hanging room,” not for exhibitions, but as a place to show and finalize work created within the department, a space which can be used as an interface between an audience from other School departments and friendly audiences from outside the School.
This space for experimentation, not subject to programs or scheduling, is also a place to see students’ and guest artists’ work.
Methodology
The methodology encourages students’ artistic autonomy while they learn to understand the creative process:
documentation > formulation of a work protocol > experimentation > execution > exchange > analysis and interpretation of the relationship of the signifier – signified > conclusions.
After which:
demonstration structure > analysis and interpretation of the relationship of the signifier – signified of the demonstration structure and context > showing of the work in the Projectroom and in other venues intra and extra muros.
Evaluation criteria allow students to respond to:
- the formal and critical presentation of their work;
- the genesis and development of research and production phases of the project;
- the quality of the works’ execution;
- cultural inclusion of the work by appropriation and the pertinence of references and the relationship of skills to the fields involved
Pedagogical coordination :
Claude Cattelain