From September 3–6, 2026, the exhibition FIGURAMA, For a Return to Reality brings together 21 international artists of contemporary figurative art at the Bastille Design Center, in Paris.

The FIGURAMA exhibition brings together 21 international artists in contemporary figurative art, curated by Athina Perrin and Sébastien Jupille: Louis Accard, Colleen Barry, Hollis Dunlap, Frédéric Forest, Fabrice Grimard, Amaya Gurpide, H. Craig Hanna, Sébastien Jupille, Thomas Lapine, Kate Lehman, Roman Lehman Schlaht, Alex Lutz, Rachel Marazano, Edward Minoff, Victor Pierrey, Travis Schlaht, Oleksii Shcherbak, Slava Shults, Jordan Sokol, Helen Ström and Charles Villeneuve.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

At a moment when images proliferate and the visual stream accelerates to the point of dissolving our gaze, returning to the act of seeing becomes almost a deliberate, engaged gesture. To truly see, to take time with what we look at, to reinvest in a sensorial experience of the world: it is in this spirit that the exhibition Figurama, Pour un retour du réel is conceived, and presented at the Bastille Design Center from September 3 to 6, 2026, initiated by Sébastien Jupille, artist and founder of the Figura workshops, and Athina Perrin, art historian and founder of the Cūra artistic agency.

She argues that reality must be put back at the core of contemporary creation, not as nostalgia, but as a pressing imperative today.

The project is built on a foundational idea: academism is not an end in itself but a springboard. It provides a living bedrock from which each artist can develop a singular vision. It isn’t about rehabilitating a fixed past, but about reviving the know-how and perceptions that our era—often dominated by concepts and discourse—has relegated to the margins. In this context, figurative painting once again serves a crucial function: not merely to represent the world, but to offer an experience of it.

Through careful observation, she retrains the eye; through the material, she restores density to the visible; and by the time it demands, she introduces a form of resistance to digital immediacy. The work thus asserts itself first as presence—visual, physical—before any interpretation.

This approach echoes the analyses of Aude de Kerros, who in her work highlights the gradual fading of know-how in favor of discursive and speculative logics. It underscores a lasting rift between an institutional art that is often disembodied and a practice that is quieter, rooted in mastery, transmission, and the experience of reality. The Figurama exhibition sits within this tension, giving visibility to these approaches.

That said, it isn’t a look fixed on the past. In the vein of Jean Clair, whose thinking blends critical rigor with an awareness of contemporary upheavals, this exhibition offers above all an observation: an era in search of perceptible touchstones. The return to the figure is not a retreat, but an open question: what becomes of our relationship with the world when the image detaches from lived experience?

The artists gathered—H. Craig Hanna, Travis Schlaht, Kate Lehman, Colleen Barry, Victor Pierrey, Slava Shults, Helen Ström, Alex Lutz, Frédéric Forest, and Sébastien Jupille, among others—share a common commitment: a rigorous practice grounded in observation, knowledge, and direct experience. Their works, though diverse, reflect a shared attentiveness to reality and a longing to reconnect with an embodied, experiential approach to painting.

Figurama breaks out of a narrow figurative frame to offer a path to reconciliation: between tradition and modernity, between craft and freedom, between looking and thinking. In the spirit of the ateliers evoked by Gustave Courbet, the exhibition spotlights an international community of artists for whom transmission is a lever of emancipation, not a constraint.

In an art landscape that is often fragmented, Figurama asserts a continuity — not of a style, but of an imperative: to see, to understand, to master the craft.

Looking here becomes an act.
And perhaps, already, a form of resistance.

Friday, September 4, 5–7 p.m.: Meet-and-sign with author Michel Bernard.

Saturday, September 5, 5–7 p.m.: Launch and signing of the artist Frédéric Forest’s new book, "Somewhere in New York City."

Sunday, September 6, 4–6 p.m.: Artist conversations with Louis Accard, Frédéric Forest, Sébastien Jupille, Kate Lehman, Victor Pierrey, Travis Schlaht and Helen Ström, among others.

Sunday, September 6, 6–9 p.m.: Public closing toast.

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