This exhibition presents works by artists who are students or who recently graduated from Beaux-Arts de Paris. Its aim is to show the diversity of photographic writing in present communities working with image. Poltergeists: striking spirits, struck spirits is thus a metaphor for our fears and desires, for some sort of collective unconscious that strikes our reading of the world and, in turn, is also struck by our actions. As philosopher Michel de Certeau writes, "The mind invents creative forms of resistance to cope with the pressures of modern life, and ghosts are part of that."
The Beaux-Arts are a place for training and artistic experimentation, an exhibition space, a place for the conservation of historical and contemporary collections and a publishing house.
A five-year course combines the founding elements of the artistic process and the challenges of contemporary art. The schooling is unique, founded on workshop practices coordinated by a renowned artist, and the diversity of techniques, from the most traditional to the most contemporary.
Home to the collections of the Royal Academies, the Beaux-Arts possess a trove of over 450,000 works whose presentation to the public they insure through exhibitions and loans. They occupy a vast architectural spread over two hectares, classified as historical monuments.