Eva Jospin

Eva Jospin beckons us before strange and beguiling forests. The last few years have seen her attentions drawn to the question of landscape and how it is depicted, and she uses but one medium – cardboard – to sculpt her sweeping “Forests”.

The correlations between this material and the object it portrays are both logical and contradictory. Jospin explains that she approaches cardboard in terms of its contrasts. This rudimentary, brittle and fragile-looking material will be controlled, tamed and ennobled, turned (once more) into a tree by the end of this creative process, thus embodying at once the solidity of a trunk and the delicate complexities of a forest.

“Eva Jospin is fully aware of the challenge harboured within these undergrowths, foliages and glades: recreate a never-ending entanglement, go beyond the illusions of depth through masterful uprooting and cutting-out and experiment with the boundaries of a setting and surface to trick the eye.” Dominique Païni.

The artist, who designs her work like a projection space, depicts the varying forms and density of forests and explores the endless poetry and imaginings they stir up. A single glance is enough for the work to cast its spell over visitors. Almost in spite of themselves, they are grabbed by the sheer evocative power of this natural element; the further they gaze into the layers of branches and leaves, the more they seem to lose track of their thoughts. “For isn’t losing yourself the only danger posed by this natural labyrinth that is a forest?” Dominique Païni.

Biographical notes

Born in 1975, Eva Jospin graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 2002.