Shape-Shifting: Transfiguring Art History

Grégory Sugnaux

For several years, Grégory Sugnaux has been exploring global visual cultures and their iconography, which he processes in thematic series. His research is based on archives of images and materials that include media such as art historical book illustration, photography, video, videogames, and comics, which are in constant growth and are each reordered in iconographic cross-sections and lines of development. For example, he recently produced a series of images dedicated to the pictorial form of the grotesque, in which he processed the famous Mannerist entrance portal of the Bibliotheca Hertziana, placing it in line with more recent phenomena of the grotesque. The present project, entitled Shape-shifting: Transfiguring Art History, focus on the visual discourse of art history and thus pursue the legacy of Aby Warburg’s iconology. For this purpose, the Bibliotheca Hertziana’s library and phototheque offer an extraordinarily rich fund. Grégory Sugnaux’s artistic methods of image analysis through image processing thus offer productive interfaces with the research foci of the Weddigen department. 
Grégory Sugnaux’s artistic journey, characterized by a playful integration of historical imagery and contemporary cultural fragments, culminated in an exhibition titled Post Scriptum, where ancient grotesques were melded with present-day elements. This project’s exploration of the liminal space between past and present offers a whimsical yet thought-provoking commentary on the enduring relevance of visual motifs.