Informed by the material turn which has brought the artwork back to its material ontology, the workshop proposes to extend this approach toward a reflection on poiesis – that is, artistic making as a living process through which the work of art comes into being, without neglecting the semantic potential that is intrinsically linked to this process of becoming. Far from being a mere condition, matter imposes technical constraints just as much as it sets the very terms of its hermeneutics. The artwork emerges from a symbiotic dialectic situated at the heart of a triadic relation in which material, artist, and beholder mutually shape one another. The aim, therefore, is to rethink the fundamental duality between matter/form and content, not as a binary opposition between one and the other, but as a productive “both at once.” Rather than prolonging the logic of the material turn or reverting to classical iconology, the ambition is to bring these two approaches into fruitful dialogue and to explore the agency of matter through a lens that is at once poetic and conceptual, aesthetic and meaningful.

A cooperation between: 
Département d’Histoire de l’Art et d’Archéologie (Université de Fribourg) & 
Department Kunstwissenschaften (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
Date : June 2 > 3, 2026
Place : Salle Jäggi (MIS 04 4112) 
Organizers : Dominic-Alain Boariu, Yannis Hadjinicolaou and Jérémie Koering