Judith Frament

Lives and works in Paris, France

Artist statement

My practice revolves around the tableau. I deliberately use this term rather than “painting”: for me, the tableau designates a situation of the image, whether it takes the form of a painting, a photograph, or a sculpture. The tableau is at once a surface on which an image appears, an object situated in space, and a dispositif that organizes its circulation and reception: it carries within it the traces of the conditions of its production. This understanding of the tableau leads me to consider the infrastructures of art as part of its subject, without seeking to illustrate them. Rather, I aim to make perceptible the material, historical, and social conditions that determine how an image appears, circulates, and acquires value. As a transitional object, the tableau is both produced by a context and productive of that context. I use art history in my work as a raw material. The images I work with have been reproduced and looked at often enough to have become recognizable before they are actually scrutinized, functioning almost as collective images. An image belonging to art history functions as a form of cultural exchange value: it circulates and can be identified, recognized, and attributed. I seek to momentarily interrupt this circulation and put the image back into play within a new situation. The aim is to move the image from a status of reference to that of an active material, restoring to it a use value. I tend to make the viewer active, to have them conscious of what...

Artwork