Eva Jospin 🇬🇧

Folly in Chaumont sur Loire

The forests, the caves of Eva Jospin .. these words resonate with me and lead me into the enchantments that the artist has invented since the Beaux-Arts and its passage to the Villa Medici. Eva Jospin creates real follies in the artistic sense of the eighteenth century, her creations are plant-inspired, with concrete, cardboard, typically poor materials to which the artist gives a new nobility.

“Folie” 2018 – Domaine de Chaumont. Béton et matériaux divers. 500 X 450 cm © Eva Jospin

Who is she

But who is Eva Jospin? This young woman, under an apparent fragility, is the face of the Florentine renaissance, determined, and she never stops.

She has exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo, Chaumont sur Loire, in Germany … and during the Fiac 2016, at the Louvre.

With Eva Jospin © The Gaze of a Parisienne

Memories from 2016

In the square courtyard of the Louvre, I remember this panorama, this enchantment penetrating into the forest, a work in 3 dimensions, which enveloped us and, thus, we become actors in a real or imaginary world. A unique immersive experience where the forest surrounds you with its creepers, ligatures and treetops. This panorama paid homage to Hubert Robert which was also a diorama and a panoptic, in the spirit of encyclopaedists and philanthropists. The installation, set in the middle of the square courtyard of the Louvre, resonated strangely by its reflections of its facades (behind the guest resident Hubert Robert) and its concretions of false rocks in cardboard. A journey back in time in this wonderful panorama installed in the Cour Carrée du Louvre, from the interior cardboard forest to the Louvre Royal Palace reflecting distorted on the exterior mirrors of the installation. An experience of nature in the city, the essential trees, Eva Jospin sculpts them, she carves small twigs as a goldsmith, the ordinary cardboard is extraordinary. A theatrical setting that made one think about the illusion of power, the play of reflections and the political function of art, particularly in France, pays where the cultural state is a paradigm.Always focused in her work, there are many facets that illuminate our thoughts, the fairy tales of our childhood resurge, are we in the forest of Sleeping Beauty or that of Tom Thumb? From the iconography of art history to the realities of graves and the destruction of trees.

Eva Jospin. Panorama 12 avril – 28 août 2016 © Eva Jospin. Architecture Outsign. Courtesy Noirmontartproduction.

London

Paris – London, there we find the artist Eva Jospin.

Her presence is concretized in the English artistic landscape. Today for a talk in front of a crowd of amateurs, reunited by Marie-Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre for her club Spirit Now and next March, his trees, which, in France, attract her the recognition of the public, exercised part of exhibition of the Hayward Gallery Parmi les arbres, Ralf Rugoff, her charismatic director, curator of the Venice Biennale, is present in the assembly.The forest has become a celebrity today in our contemporary world. Eva Jospin foresaw this movement of society, “What are trees dreaming about? which became a best seller. The Cartier Foundation exhibits on Nous les Arbres and the rich countries are mobilizing against the deforestation of the Amazon. The Dreamer of the Zadkine Museum Forest exhibits Eva Jospin’s Black Forest in bronze, another favorite material. The forests of Eva Jospin refer to the founding myth of the forest “dark and obscure” to resume the first lines of the Hell of Dante: it is at the same time the place of our anxieties but also that of the pagan and sacred celebrations, pillar from heaven, as in the spirit of the ancient Saxons.

Its attractive cardboard trees stand out from the simple decor. They symbolize so many important values of humanity, peace, life, protection. A fiction, the reality of the forests fades away, they are cardboard, ambivalent material, elevated to the rank of majesty and through it, appears to me the recognition of the city vis-à-vis the nature which felt the impact of its presence on the bitumen. The cardboard is thus the suitable material to represent the strength and the fragility of the forests. It is fragile and ductile but its density gives it considerable resistance. It thus intrigues with its ambiguity: it appears monotonous and monochromatic while it presents the finite nuances, by variety and by stratification. One of the few raw materials as she explains to the newspaper Le Monde,

*“Traversée” 2018 Beaupassage – Paris 7 – Oeuvre Pérenne. -2400-x-530-cm © Eva Jospin*

“(…) Who do not claim any respect. If it’s not right, on destroyed. This gives the possibility to be wrong, to be reactive. Which is much less possible with, for example, casting a bronze! Eva Jospin (article by Emmanuelle Lequeux, 16 August 2018)

The works are presented as real scenographies. The artist could dream as a theater designer where her great compositions would unfold. A piece of Gorky comes to mind, the Estivants, played by the French Comedy, where the characters evolve in a birch forest, unaware of the catastrophe that was to come.

*March 2018. Emerige Mécénat – Voyage au centre de la Terre – Jérôme Sans, curator Paris 13 © Eva Jospin © The Gaze of a Parisienne*

The caves or “follies” of Eva Jospin

She talks about her “follies”, her inspirations. The story of a cave drawn in ink conquered by creepers sketching a fantastic world. Concrete to build the folly of the twenty-first millennium, a staging of gardens, all these romantic gardens, the ancient caves she visited, Eva brings up to date nymphs (natural or artificial cave where a spring flows) , a place of refuge for nymphs, which was very popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I think of that of Piédefer, or that of the Prince of Conti Auvers sur Oise, which I discovered a ittle. The interiors are richly decorated with mosaic of shells. Eva takes these elements of old time decor combining modern materials for her follies that she installs in a park surrounding this incredible castle of Trévarez, bombed during the war or this cave in Chaumont carved cement well hidden in the undergrowth, where nature gradually regains its rights, seizing the work with its brambles, its ivy.Domaine de Trévarez, the dream of James de Kerjégu

The Nymphaeum of Trévarez Castle is an alcove that prolongs and completes the décor wanted by James de Kerjegu. Because everything is theatrical in this castle built for the political prestige of the president of the general council of Finistere, was is also a member of the constituency and monarchist “rallied” to the Republic before the Dreyfus affair. The architect of Parisian mansions is the master builder, Walter-André Destailleur, and uses modernity (metal frame, elevator, electric cooler and greenhouses) to build a model of historicism. The “Nymphaeum” is thought of as a work of garden, probably in the spirit of what the owner of the castle would have liked, at the foot of an Italian-inspired garden and the basin of the Chasse. The contemporary decor of this piece, cardboard, reflects the filiation with the artist while extending the hand and spirit of the Marquis James de Kerjégu.

*« Nymphées » 2019 carton, papier coloré, laiton, bois, plâtre. 330 X 180 X 160 cm – Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve.*

The myth of the cave

Eva Jospin enriches her refined imagination, the cave is as closed on the outside as it is hollow on the inside. It makes us discover the myth of the cave dear to Plato: the reality is these shadows on the cave where the sun is divined through the crevices of the walls?

*“Capriccio” 2019 – Carton, papier coloré, bois et plâtre . 225 X 95 X 95 cm (détail) et « Bas-relief » 2019 résine acrylique. 253 X 350 X 9 cm © Eva Jospin*

The viewer can then remain pensive, immersed in his reverie solitary walker, imagining the fate of these caves gradually invaded by nature such as the ancient temples of the Khmer kingdom of Angkor.

Among the trees – Hayward Gallery – 4 March / 17 May 2020 – London

Florence Briat Soulié

By Jacqueline Knox

Eva Jospin London November 28 th . I spent a very enjoyable evening at the beautiful home of Maria Sukka who was hosting the artist Eva jospin. Eva makes sculptures out of cardboard. They reminded me of the high relief sculptures of the Renaissance, particularly Lorenzo Ghiberti “Gates of Paradise” ( 1425-52) on the east doors of the Florence Baptistery. Eva’s sculptures are layer upon layer of cut out trees.

When she was a child she had memories of floating down the Amazon with her parents in a small boat, her viewpoint would have been at the same level that we were viewing the sculptures now, a long landscape. As I looked at these landscapes I thought about forests. As Eva explained in her interview “ Forests can be places of secrets and stories, particularly myths and fairytales. Forests can be so beautiful and dark at the same time. The sculptures remind you of your childhood if you have been in a forest or listened to childhood fairy stories”. I lived in Northern Australia, where similar to the Amazon, there is rich tropical rainforest. I remember the dappled light falling through the leaves and those scary dark and damp hidden areas. Also layer upon layer of trees creating such depth.
Photo
The scale and choice of medium effects how we view these sculptures. Being made of cardboard they are fragile and bio-degradable thus reminding us of the fragility of the eco-systems around us. However their large scale makes them appear more lifelike and over-powering.

Eva jospin is coming to London next Spring at the Hayward Gallery. I am impatient to see her work in reality and not just in photo format.

Translated by Joshua Lacoste , Vassar-Wesleyan Program in Paris Fall 2019

*” Nymphée” 2018 – Domaine de Trévarez © Eva Jospin*

Exhibitions

EVA JOSPIN – WALD(T)RÄUME. Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern. Allemagne

24 August 019 – 12 January 2020.

AMONG THE TREES – Hayward Gallery – Londres

4 March– 17 May 2020

Hayward Gallery

Founded in 2015 by Marie-Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, Spirit Now London is a club, by invitation only, gathering through exclusive events, collectors and benefactors of the art and cultural worlds.Several times a month, cultural personalities are sharing their ideas and inspirations, artists are opening their studios and private collectors are sharing their favourite art pieces.Spirit Now London is also supporting every year an artist’s exhibition or an art institution.

Biographie / Biography

Née en 1975 à Paris, France / Born in 1975 in Paris, France
Vit et travaille à Paris, France / Lives and works in Paris, France

EDUCATION & AWARDS

2016 « Pensionnaire » at the Villa Médicis, Rome, Italy
2015 Prix de l’Académie des Beaux-Arts / Prix de gravure et sculpture Frédéric et Jean de Vernon, Paris, France 2002 DNSEP, Ecole Nationale Supérieur des Beaux-Arts de Paris, France

EXPOSITIONS PERSONNELLES / SOLO SHOWS

2019
Eva Jospin, Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, Paris, France

2018
Sous-bois, Palazzo Dei Diamanti, Ferrara, Italy
Viva Roma, La Boverie, Liege, Belgium
Domaine de Trévarez – Abbaye de Doualas, Saint-Goazec, France

2017
La chalcographie du Louvre by Eva Jospin, Fiac 2017, Ateliers dʼart de la Rmn – Grand Palais, Paris, France

2016
Panorama, Cour Carrée du Louvre, Paris, France

2015
Eva Jospin, Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, Paris, France
Déjeuner sur lʼherbe, Hermès, 56th Venice Biennale – Collateral Events, Venice, Italy

2013
Carte blanche à Eva Jospin, Manufacture des Gobelins, Paris, France

2011
Détails dʼune forêt, Galerie Pièce Unique, Paris, France Al blu di Prussia, Naples, Italy

2004
Art Mobile, Galleria 9 via della Vetrina contemporanea, Rome, Italy Galleria Le pleiadi, Mola di Bari, Italy Centre culturel français, Jakarta, Indonesia

2001
Opere recenti, Galleria 9 via della Vetrina contemporanea, Rome, Italy

EXPOSITIONS COLLECTIVES / GROUP SHOWS

2019
Le rêveur de la forêt Musée Zadkine 27 septembre 2019 – 23 février 2020

2018
La Traversée, projet dʼEmerige, Beaupassage, Paris, France
2008-2018 – 10 ans dʼart – Folie, Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, Chaumont-sur-Loire, France Voyage au centre de la Terre, Espaces Éphémères, Tolbiac, Paris, France (Curator: Jérôme Sans) Bruxelles – Les rendez-vous de la Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, Espace 37, Brussels, Belgium