ART CITIES: Paris-Eva Jospin

Eva Jospin is known for her captivating and intricate large-scale installations, sculptures, and drawings that delve into the realms of nature and architecture. Over the years, her artistic practice has evolved to encompass a wide range of mediums, from cardboard to wood, creating enchanting forest-like environments and mysterious architectural structures.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Galleria Continua Archive

Eva Jospin’s works invite the viewer into a world where the boundaries between the natural and the man-made blur, often leaving us in awe of the meticulous detail and craftsmanship. Her sculptures, sometimes resembling dense forests or majestic ruins, are meticulously constructed, evoking a sense of wonder and contemplation. The interplay of light and shadow within her works adds a mesmerizing quality, further immersing the viewer in her poetic universe. Jospin’s exploration of space and nature invites us to reflect on our relationship with the environment and the stories it holds, offering a glimpse into a dreamlike reality where imagination flourishes. Located on the first floor of the Galleria Continua Gallery, the exhibition “Tromper L’œil” brings together recent and previously unseen works created specifically for the occasion. Gathering themes dear to the artist, a variety of techniques are explored: from her emblematic cardboard forests and architectures to her drawings, embroideries and bronzes, as well as a new series of works unveiled to the public for the first time. The title of the exhibition refers to trompe- l’œil, a figurative pictorial genre that has existed since antiquity, which became very popular during the Renaissance. The story of its origins, narrated by Pliny the Elder, tells of a rivalry between two painters, leading them to create works so realistic that one succeeded in deceiving nature and the other in misleading his rival. The artist’s works are figurative, but the representation is never intended to be narrative. Eva Jospin invites the visitors to wander, contemplate, imagine and construct their own narrative. In “Tromper l’œil”, we stroll through woods and fossil forests, but also through Renaissance gardens, nymphaeums and ancient caves. These influences come not only from fairy tales and mythology, but above all from a rich artistic culture that spans the centuries and graphic and sculptural representations. In a constant interplay of scale, the artist sculpts, cuts and carves the cardboard to assemble her Promontory, a majestic sculpture constituting a masterpiece (in reference to the piece that an apprentice must create to become a master of his craft). A gazebo, a grotto and a labyrinth rise in the space, linked together by an aqueduct and a bridge, inviting visitors to give free rein to their imagination. Eva Jospin’s work is built up from an accumulation of multiple layers of cardboard, which she sculpts by addition, gradually creating volume. She then focuses on the ornamentation and the profusion of details. The cardboard is transformed into rock, nymphs, filled with vines and other elements borrowed from nature. This blend of nature and culture is also evident in her embroidered works. The artist evokes the splendid embroidery room in Rome’s Palazzo Colonna (discovered during her residency at Villa Medici), as well as the paintings of the Nabis and Édouard Vuillard, where figures blend together with the background in an infinite profusion of details. The intertwining of colored threads creates a rhythm, reminiscent of the abundance of lines in the artist’s ink drawings. The ink drawings, considered as proper artworks, also function as preparatory models for the embroideries, something which in art historic jargon referred to cartoon (cartone) in Italian, which also has the meaning of cardboard). And so the circle is complete. The drawings and the large embroidery presented in the exhibition are preparatory and smaller versions of the monumental embroidered panels that will be unveiled during the artist’s show at the Orangerie of Versailles. Eva Jospin will indeed present her very first embroidered work from 2021, “La Chambre de soie” (The silk Chamber), created for a Dior haute couture collection show, with two added panels to perfectly fit the space. Throughout the exhibition, the forest can be seen multiple times in cardboard, bronze, and for the first time, in an embroidered high relief. The forest, related to the tales of our childhood, is above all a mental forest for the artist. It is place where we like to lose and find ourselves, gathering our fears and questions. The cardboard, left raw, puts the forest at the border of the industrial and natural world. Just a glance to the sides is enough to discern the subterfuges, spot the supports, realize the illusionary depth that halts at the wall, and thus witness the revelation of a diorama. The bronze version, cast from a cardboard forest, has been brushed and waxed. The tangle of branches reveals the honeycomb structure of the cardboard matrix. The bronze, left unpolished, highlights the natural color of the metal, recalling the reliquaries and sculptures commonly found in Asian temples, once again evoking the multiple inspirations summoned by the artist. The embroidered version, the first of its kind to be unveiled to the public, is clothed in delicately colored silk veils, and recreates the light filtering through the twigs. Here the artifice is twofold: the composition is both forest and cardboard. Until now, embroideries in the artist’s work had never left the plane, but now it bursts into space. In the forest or in the cave, the embroidery not only recalls the colors of the vegetation, but also its textures.

Photo: Eva Jospin, Trompe l’œil, exhibition view, GALLERIA CONTINUA, Paris, 2024, Courtesy the artist and Galleria Continua, Photo – Benoit Fougeirol © ADAGP, Paris

Info: Galleria Continua, 87 rue du Temple, Paris, France, Duration: 7/6-14/9/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.galleriacontinua.com/