This special exhibition at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, where he has taught since 2015, presents for the first time to the public a substantial collection of some fifty drawings, produced between 2006 and 2021.

Alongside his work as a poet and writer, Pierre Alferi (1963-2023) drew continuously and intensively for many years. This long-discreet practice was not shared until 2020 on his Enseignes website. These drawings explore the “pictorial couplings of word and image”, about which Pierre Alferi has regularly written. For him, they have been as much a problem of representation as a familiar path, among others, for exploring his moods and passions. Humor is expressed on several levels, in the discrepancies or connivances between words and images, and through the play of words with each other and with images. The various ways in which the two meet are the central theme of his pictorial work.

Pierre Alferi drew his daily inspiration from a variety of image sources, both in print and on screen. The iconographic variety reflects the diversity of his chosen objects, which range from medieval illuminations to Mad Magazine cartoonists, Japanese imagery, primers and Romantic vignettes. Almost all his drawings are copies, based on one or more source images, which he alters by retracing them, sometimes to the point of blurring the references. Prime thus the imaginary network in which he takes them, and which puns complete the link in a short-circuit of meaning. A mural airbrushed by Hippolyte Hentgen highlights the human relationships in which Pierre Alferi lived his creative work, and the multiple collaborations to which he contributed. It adopts the motifs of an original drawing by Hippolyte Hentgen, transformed, extrapolated and dispersed on the scale of the Cabinet des dessins et des estampes - Jean Bonna.

Curators: Kathy Alliou, director of the Fine Art Department at the Beaux-Arts de Paris and Paul Sztulman, professor of art history and theory at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs.

Practical information 

Wednesday February 12 2025 - Sunday April 20 2025
Cabinet des dessins et des estampes - Jean Bonna
Beaux-Arts de Paris, 14 rue Bonaparte, Paris 6e
Wednesday to Sunday, 1pm-7pm
5€, 10€ or 15€ it's up to you!