‘We know it’s a game; we know it’s fake; but it’s a way to create a pathway of inner imagination for ourselves,’ explained the French artist Eva Jospin on the occasion of the reveal of Microclima (2022), a permanent, site-specific work created for the Max Mara flagship store in Milan, part of Collezione Maramotti. A year later, Italy embraced the artist’s first solo exhibition in the country. ‘Vedute’ was inaugurated in May at Galleria Continua’s historical space in San Gimignano in Tuscany and can be visited until September this year.
Dreamlike and meticulous
‘Extremely poetic and dreamlike’ — that’s how Julien Bouharis, co-director of Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve in Paris, describes the artist’s works. Apart from touching a chord in the poetic department, Jospin’s sculptures are also remarkably methodical and precise, which is not surprising when you think about Eva Jospin’s educational background. She began her studies in architecture and then switched to sculpture when she unlocked her genuine desire to create objects by hand. The artist graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris and has composed forests and landscapes across various media – recently predominantly cardboard – for the past fifteen years.
Effortlessly immersing
Her most fascinating projects are monumental and immersive installations, like Panorama (2016) atop the central fountain of the Cour Carrée du Louvre, an artistic architecture in which the facades of the Louvre Palace are reflected on the walls clad in mirror-polished steel on the outside, while the immersive inside of the installation is filled with a 360° vegetal environment that reflects the universe of forests and caves; Cenotaph (2020), a three-floor tower, a majestic tribute monument to the deceased, composed here of different layers of sculpted cardboard and coloured paper, an imaginary architectural, organic, mineral, and plant-made building situated by the artist in an ancestral setting of the Abbey of Montmajour; not to mention the breathtaking set of embroidered panels Chambre de Soie (2021), created for the Dior Haute Couture fashion show, 350 m2 of the diligently decorated walls of the luxury fashion house, embroidered in India, in Mumbai, at the Chanakya workshops, and the Chanakya School of Craft, according to Jospin’s sketches; or the sizeable Nymphées (2022), a breathtaking, gloomy, theatrical décor made for Dior’s Spring-Summer 2023 collection.
Fusion between worlds
Other impressive permanent installations include Folie (inaugurated in 2015) at the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, resembling decorative garden constructions whose primary function was to embellish the promenade, here created with an unusual material for the artist, moulded concrete, which gives a foundation for both delicate and monumental work that combines the mineral and the vegetable realms; La Traversée (2018) at Beaupassage, Paris, a large cardboard forest produced in the length of the access passage of Boulevard Raspail, is reflected, on the left side, by plane poly-mirrors; and Le Passage (2019) in Nantes, where the artist designed a gargantuan trellis with the use of lianas, foliage, and lighter branches, bounding and inlaiding disordered, nature-imitating mix of hammered brass elements, copper wires, and cut tracing sheets. Finally, Microclima (2022), a permanent installation conceived as a winter garden in Milan’s Max Mara store in Piazza del Liberty, a blend of exotic plants, vertical rocks, and a mineral substrate situated behind the glass of an intimate space of a greenhouse, at the same time boldly exposed to the public.
Veduta means ‘a view’
The birth of the vedute, their corresponding art trend called vedutismo, and artists called vedutisti dates back to the 16th-century Flanders (with Paul Bril as one of the representatives). Vedute (views) reproduce natural and urban landscapes. In the 17th century, Dutch painters appealed to the sense of local pride of the wealthy Dutch middle class, creating detailed and accurately recognisable cities and landscapes (see Johannes Vermeer’s landscapes). Lieven Cruyl, the Ghent architect, draughtsman, and engraver, contributed to developing a type of vedute that reproduced the topographical aspects of the urban landscape during his residence in Rome in the late 17th century. Calling her first Italian show ‘Vedute’, the artist emphasises how fond of Italy she is and pays her personal homage to art history.
Venetian capriccio
By the mid-18th century, thanks to its distinctiveness, Venice became the centre of skilled vedutisti (Luca Carlevarijs, Canaletto, and Bernardo Bellotto, among others), thanks to the city’s remarkable views and unique colour games of architecture reflected on the ubiquitous water’s surface. There are two strands within vedute, an awareness of which helps recognise Jospin’s efforts to embrace the natural evolution of art history. The first one is a realistic view, which, as the name suggests, aims at reproducing reality objectively. The other is capriccio, in which landscapes are represented – partially or wholly – as a fantasy.
The fragility of the world that surrounds us
Cardboard is one of Eva Jospin’s most cherished materials. Her current exhibition at Galleria Continua includes various materials and techniques implemented into works of medium dimensions. There are impenetrable forests and caves made from cardboard, inspired by Renaissance gardens populated with ruins, architectural follies, and intertwining vegetation. The exhibition begins the collaboration between the artist and the gallery, therefore, the show gives space to the exploration of the plurality of Jospin’s practices. Stratifications moulded in plaster cement, ink drawings, silk thread embroideries, and honeycomb cardboard sculptures invite visitors to look into Jospin’s finest tools, tailored to inhabit our imagination.
Numerous layers of landscapes
Bordering with trompe l’oeil and set design, Jospin’s multidimensional sculptures lure us into getting closer and studying them from all possible angles. La Forêt (2023) is a sculpture resembling a traditional oil painting because of its size, rectangular form, and classic position on the wall. Situated at the end of the visitor’s path in the gallery, it’s also the most magnetic object, featuring an unspeakable attention to detail that invites us to study it from up close. The sculpture depicts dense and impenetrable forests, an element that typically takes the role of an irrelevant background in Renaissance paintings, but here becomes the main subject. The unique feature of the artist’s many cardboard projects is that she resists the urge to approach them decoratively. Instead, Jospin usually leaves them bare and without colours. A by-product of such a methodology is that the resulting imaginaries of forests appear desiccated, bringing to mind a fossil of a bygone era.
Stratifications symbolic of memory
The complexity of the processes the artist implements highlights the importance she attaches to the concept of layers, which Jospin links both to the physical and mental operations she implements in her art-making process. When working with cardboard, she accumulates its successive layers, then sculpts and creates volume. The material is sanded and chiselled, transforming cardboard into rock. Stratificazioni (2023), for instance, are rough walls made of plaster and cement casting that resemble eroded limestone cliffs. Curves achieved by shaping the strata bear the marks of the inevitable passage of time and human activity. This work also pays homage to troglodyte architecture, where humans defied the mountains and carved out vital spaces within the stone.
Drawing with silk threads
Galleria (2023) – Italian for art gallery, tunnel, or covered passage – is a work crafted thoroughly with silk threads. This stunning arrangement of colourful embroidery woven into a rectangular frame is reminiscent of the abundance of strokes present in the artist’s drawings. Lines that seem to be etched with a burin evoke ancient engravings. Jospin believes that drawing brings together three temporalities: the present, when the act of drawing takes place; the past, thanks to numerous references; and the future, as her drawings often become projects for sculptures or embroideries.
Authenticity of illusions
We may immerse ourselves in the artist’s installations, but this illusion is designed to be easily reversible. By looking at the sides, we see how easily the works expose their ‘backstage,’ such as the supports and the deception of depth, which only reaches as far as the wall. This never-ending game of switching back and forth – poetry juxtaposed with exceptional technicality, nature with culture, and illusion with the lack thereof – invites us to reflect on and explore the artist’s ideas.
‘Vedute’
Eva Jospin
Galleria Continua, San Gimignano
27.05 – 10.09.2023
