Essais sur l'art et ses déterritorialisations by Thierry Davila reviewed

Jérôme Lebrun reviews Thierry Davila's 'Essais sur l'art et ses déterritorialisations' in art press n°364 (February 2010), published by Éditions la Lettre volée. The collection of essays examines the expansion of artistic practice since the early 1960s, when Gerhard Richter integrated ready-made and photography into painting to subvert its rules. Davila identifies the use of the term 'plasticien' as a consequence of this process, describing it as a term vague enough to encompass diverse gestures and artifacts that constitute art's content, operating at the extreme edge of meaning's emergence and potential dislocation. This play on the boundary between art and the world manifests through interference between work and object (e.g., Jessica Stockholder's blend of painting and commodity), displacement via the removal of pedestals and frames, and installation outside traditional exhibition spaces. Erwin Wurm's One Minute Sculptures negate interiority by reducing performers to 'mindless figurines.' Pierre Bismuth's work manipulates signs without producing objects, as Davila notes: 'since the starting point of the work is indistinguishable from the totality of available reality, it is potentially the entire horizon of signified experience.'