{"id":179,"date":"2026-09-06T02:34:38","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T02:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.touscreateurs.eu\/?p=179"},"modified":"2026-09-06T02:34:38","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T02:34:38","slug":"quand-loeuvre-quitte-la-toile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.touscreateurs.eu\/en\/quand-loeuvre-quitte-la-toile\/","title":{"rendered":"When the Work Leaves the Canvas"},"content":{"rendered":"

ARTICLE 5 \u2014 EXPLORING ABSTRACTION<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What happens when the frame is no longer enough?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A study by Marie Dernoncourt \u2014 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For decades, abstraction had transformed what could appear on a canvas. It had liberated colour, fragmented form, asserted gesture, explored material, and at times chosen silence and subtraction.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the support remained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A rectangle hanging on the wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gradually, some artists began to ask another question: Why should the work stop at its edges?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Piercing the Surface<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

With Lucio Fontana, this question becomes almost literal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From 1949 onwards, he punctured his surfaces. By the late 1950s, his celebrated slashes opened up the picture plane even more radically. The gesture may seem destructive; within his enquiry, however, it sought to move beyond the flat surface and bring real space into the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The canvas is no longer merely a place on which to represent something. It becomes a boundary that can be crossed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind it lies air. There is real depth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The painting begins to open onto the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Space Becomes Material<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the 1960s, other artists shifted this boundary further still.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donald Judd gradually abandoned painting for three-dimensional forms that occupy what he called real space. His works no longer represent a space: they inhabit it. The intervals, distances and emptiness between the elements become as decisive as the volumes themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a considerable shift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The work is no longer merely the object. It also becomes the relationship between the object, the wall, the floor, the light and the person moving before it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emptiness then ceases to be what is missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It becomes what connects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entering the Work<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

With Yayoi Kusama, a further step is taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1965, her first Infinity Mirror Room<\/em> transformed the repetition developed in her paintings, drawings and accumulations into a spatial experience. The mirrors multiply the space and incorporate the visitor\u2019s presence within the work itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We no longer remain in front of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We enter.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The viewer becomes presence, reflection and movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A question then arises: if the work changes as I move within it, can I still completely separate the work from the person looking at it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Almost Nothing Remains<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

With James Turrell, the object can almost disappear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the 1960s, he has worked with light, colour, architecture and perception. Some installations give us very little object to look at; instead, they place us in a situation in which we become aware of our own way of seeing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Turrell\u2019s work, light no longer merely illuminates the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Light is the work.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the viewer is no longer entirely outside it. The experience shifts towards perception itself: seeing also becomes an awareness that one is in the act of seeing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where Does the Work End?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We began with a canvas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we pierced its surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We occupied the wall, the floor and the space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We entered the installation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And finally, something shifted into our very perception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so a strange question remains: where does a work truly end?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the edge of the material?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the space around it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the body that moves through it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or in what continues to resonate after we have left the room?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps this is one of the most profound shifts achieved by abstraction: it did not merely change what we look at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It changed the place from which we look.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bridge to \u201cArt & Thought\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This fifth instalment deliberately stops here. The question \u201cWhere does the work end?\u201d may then open onto a more personal branch: the philosophy of creation, perception, silence and material, beginning with Marie\u2019s works.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

References and Sources<\/h2>\n\n\n\n