This exhibition, dear to Beaux-Arts de Paris, where he had been teaching since 2015, presents to the public for the first time a substantial body 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
2€, 5€ or 10€ it's up to you!

L'art et la vie et inversement presents the 26 artists who received the Diplôme National Supérieur d'Arts Plastiques from Beaux-Arts de Paris with the Congratulations of the Jury in 2024.

Their works present a wide diversity of subjects, materials and intentions. The challenge of showing them together is to question what they express about a generation, and what they say about today's world.

What emerges from these works is the students' desire and way of constantly blending art and life. Their lives appear in their works in iconographic, thematic and narrative forms, and their works integrate their lifestyles. Through them, we see the fragility of the world and the threat it faces. There's nothing new in taking close friends and family members as models, but this approach has another meaning here: L'art et la vie et inversement reveals a flexible, fluid world in which reversals are possible, where landscapes speak of inner worlds, and intimate monologues speak of the world as it is.

These are horizons inspired by childhood visions, inhabited by singular forms of spirituality, or marked by the tragedies of history. Bodies are put to the test in pain, indeterminacy, hallucination, tenderness or malice. Gleaners in the city or in nature, these artists often appear inclined to help each other and to dialogue between the arts. Landscapes, and the human and non-human beings who populate them, are sometimes themselves the actors in a film. Characters emerge from another film to enter life. Other works deliver more domestic, intimate visions. For them, gentleness is sometimes a way of tackling the toughest subjects. A vision of a world in transformation, of an enigmatic present, these positions are based on the complexity of human beings. What emerges is a shared humanity, efforts to hold on to worlds on the verge of disappearing, narratives sometimes beyond the realms of reality.

Curator : Anaël Pigeat

2024 Félicités : Gilad ASHERY, Örs BATMAZ, Abdelhak BENALLOU, Margot BERNARD, Zoé BERNARDI, Thomas BUSWELL, Anna DE CASTRO BARBOSA, Alessandro DI LORENZO, Hugo FRANCONERI, Clémence GBONON, Claire GITTON, Julien HEINTZ, Hélène JANICOT, Ruoxi JIN, Bahar KOCABEY, Joshua MERCHAN RODRIGUEZ, Alexandre NITZSCHE CYSNE, Sergiy PETLYUK, Hajar SATARI, Anne SIMIN SHITRIT, Isadora SOARES BELLETTI, Hugo VIANA DA SILVA, Leïla VILMOUTH, Louise VO TAN, Libo WEI, Alexandre YANG

Practical informations

Wednesday, February 12, 2025 to Sunday, March 16, 2025
Wednesday to Sunday, 1pm-7pm, Wednesday night until 9pm
Palais des Beaux-Arts
13 quai Malaquais, 75006 Paris

Responsible ticketing €2, €5 or €10, it's up to you!

Becoming Exhibition: Making Art PUBLIC

Meet and sign the book La Fabrique de l'École des Beaux-Arts à Paris with co-authors Maxime Decommer and Anne Debarre, and architectural historian Guy Lambert.

Narrating the invisible and the living

Sara Favriau is first and foremost a sculptor: a hut, a pirogue, a bow, a tree... are elements that form part of her formal and conceptual vocabulary, and carry their own dramaturgy.

Interested in joining the Beaux-Arts de Paris? Attend our Open House

This exhibition, dear to Beaux-Arts de Paris, where he had been teaching since 2015, presents to the public for the first time a substantial body of some fifty drawings, produced between 2006 and 2021.

Practical information

L'art et la vie et inversement presents the 26 artists who received the Diplôme National Supérieur d'Arts Plastiques from Beaux-Arts de Paris with the Congratulations of the Jury in 2024.

Practical informations