What is the contemporary field of sculpture? What form does it produce? For what space? What is its intention? What questions does it answer? For which society? These are the questions asked in the DNSEP Sculpture option: Students invest in contemporary sculpture, steeped in a long tradition, shaken up by new knowledge, new techniques and new aspirations. Since cubist preoccupations, Braque and Picasso’s relief’s, Malevitch’s supremist works, Duchamp’s readymades and even Gilbert and George’s Singing Sculpture, sculpture has been questioning and manipulating reality to expand its own territory in the hybrid or subversive practice of the object and/or its exhibition space. Emerging new physicalities force us to rethink sculpted work in the social, economic and political context in turmoil. The Sculpture teaching project helps the student to gradually emerge as an artist in their own right, supported by a dedicated teaching team in a rich discussion between the art of doing and the art of saying. 

The DNSEP Sculpture option at the Tour site of the TALM School of Art and Design is open to ten or so graduates from European art schools who already hold a DNA or a DNSEP in art or design or the equivalent. 

The teaching schedule is designed to develop student knowledge of materials and to offer them partnerships for large-scale productions, to work on the specific vocabulary of sculpture, to experiment with material, with form and to unlock the potential of technology with the help of technicians from TALM-Tours and in partnership with the Funlab, the Tours fablab. 

Associate professors (artists, curators and theoreticians) are appointed to supervise student projects through two annual meetings. A programme of conferences on current sculpture has been established with the Olivier Debré contemporary art centre (CCC-OD). Research programmes are also associated with the curriculum, notably one run by Laboratoire des Intuitions. A publishing policy is linked to the masters, for example, the publication of an Anthology of Sculpture (not available in French), based on joint work by students and faculty, in partnership with ESTEN-Tours (digital publishing graduate school). 

TALM has an active policy of building partnerships with businesses in the Centre-Val de Loire region and specialist material research laboratories, as well as with the region’s cultural institutions: the CCC-OD, Le Confort Moderne, the Tours fine arts museum, the Moulin de Paillard, Chaumont, the École du Paysage de Blois and the Atelier Calder.