Eva Jospin @ Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Curitiba - "Re-Selvagen" Exhibition Curated by Marcello Dantas

Eva Jospin: Re-Selvagen

Curated by Marcello Dantas

Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Curitiba

Through August 10, 2025

Re-Selvagem by French artist EVA JOSPIN, is held by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum (MON) and is the artist's first show in Brazil. The exhibition is curated by Marcello Dantas.

The exhibition features nine large-scale works, including installations and drawings, as well as two videos. The installations' raw materials are silk embroidery and cardboard, but the artist also uses wood, bronze, fabric, and other materials.

"Eva Jospin at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum reinforces our mission to connect the Paraná public with the most relevant works in global contemporary art," says Luciana Casagrande Pereira, Secretary of State for Culture. "This exhibition also reaffirms Paraná's cultural diplomacy with France, in a particularly significant year marked by the celebrations of the Year of Brazil in France and of France in Brazil."

Juliana Vosnika, director-president of the MON, states that the sensitivity of French artist Eva Jospin is evident in this exhibition. "By addressing nature and time in poetic works of art, she evokes our emotional memories," she says.

Juliana Vosnika comments that the physical encounter with art allows people to recognize themselves and their own history through the works. "In a fast-paced world, the physical space of museums presents a perfect balance to our digital saturation," she highlights. "This is and should always be one of the museum's roles: to awaken deep feelings from our unconscious."

Curator Marcello Dantas explains that Eva Jospin is known for her meticulous work of creating, with her own hands, illusions of an imaginary world—silent architectures and abundant natural spaces, born from the patient and obsessive gesture of restoring a sense of origin to matter.

"For Jospin, the forest is more than a representation of nature. It's a symbolic place, where mystery, the unexpected, and transformation occur," says Marcello Dantas. "As in ancient tales, his forests are territories where we lose ourselves and find ourselves again." In Re-Selvagem, visitors walk along trails of paper and shadow, entering universes of sculpted foliage, experiencing a kind of intimate ritual. The forms evoke forgotten memories, awaken images from the collective unconscious, and provoke silence.

ARTIST EVA JOSPIN

Eva Jospin was born in Paris (1975), where she graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. For the past 15 years, she has been creating meticulous forests and architectural landscapes, exploring them through a variety of media. Drawn in ink or embroidered, sculpted in cardboard or bronze, her works evoke Italian baroque gardens, 18th-century rocaille decorations, and artificial grottoes. She was a resident at the Villa Medici in Rome in 2017 and was elected to the Sculpture section of the Academy of Fine Arts in 2024.

Among her international exhibitions, the following stand out: “Inside”, at the Palais de Tokyo, in Paris (2014); “Sous-Bois”, at the Palazzo dei Diamanti, in Ferrara (2018); “Eva Jospin - Wald(t)räume”, at the Museum Pfalzgalerie, in Kaiserslautern (2019); “Among the Trees”, at Hayward Gallery, London (2020); “Paper Tales”, at the Het Noordbrabants Museum, in Den Bosch (2021); “Galleria”, at the Musée de la Chasse and Nature, in Paris (2021); “Panorama”, at the Fondation Thalie, in Brussels (2023); and “Palazzo”, at the Palais des Papes, in Avignon (2023). In 2024, she presented two new solo exhibitions: “Selva” at the Museo Fortuny in Venice during the 60th Venice Biennale, and “Eva Jospin - Versailles” at the Orangerie of the Château de Versailles. She also created several large-scale installations as part of special commissions, including “Panorama” (2016) in the center of the Louvre's Cour Carrée and “Cénotaphe” (2020) at Montmajour Abbey. She also created a series of embroidered panels for the Dior Haute Couture 2021-2022 show (Chambre de Soie, 2021).

CURATOR MARCELLO DANTAS

Marcello Dantas is a renowned Brazilian curator, artistic director, and producer, recognized for his interdisciplinary approach that integrates art, technology, and immersive sensory experiences. Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1968, Dantas has a diverse academic background: he studied International Relations and Diplomacy in Brasília, Art History and Film Theory in Florence, and graduated in Film and Television from New York University, where he also completed a postgraduate degree in Interactive Telecommunications.  

Throughout his career, Marcello Dantas has been responsible for the design and artistic direction of several museums and pavilions, both in Brazil and abroad. He is also known for curating high-impact exhibitions that attract large audiences and specialized critics. Among them are "Ai Weiwei: Root," by Chinese artist Ai WeiWei, and "Invisible and Unspeakable," by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa, both at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum. 

MON - MUSEU OSCAR NIEMEYER

OSCAR NIEMEYER MUSEUM

Marechal Hermes Street, 999

Civic Center, Curitiba - Paraná, Brazil

www.museuoscarniemeyer.org.br 

Eva Jospin: Re-Selvagen

Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Curitiba, June 5 - August 10, 2025

Ceramist Alain Vernis @ HdM Gallery, Beijing - "Black" Exhibition

Alain Vernis | Black 

HdM Gallery, Beijing

9 April - 10 May 2025

HdM Gallery and Luohan Tang present Black, a solo exhibition by artist ALAIN VERNIS. The exhibition features over a dozen ceramic bowls, focusing on the artist’s exploration and enlightement of ceramics over the years.

Alain Vernis: The charm of simplicity

Alain Vernis's works are mainly pottery bowls. Since he set up his studio in the Haut-Morvan in 1985, he has started to make pottery with local clay. Alain Vernis didn’t learn from a master, he relied on his own exploration from kiln construction to firing. The primitive pit that he used then caused all of the pieces, shaped over ten years, to explode. He had no choice but to give up pit firing and build a new kiln. After years of adjustments, he came to discover the effects of diverse combinations of clay, water, duration of firing, type of wood. Black was once used by Taoism to discribe the invisible and intangible universe, “Darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding. ”  Darkness presents color and also the profoundness of Taoism. Alain Vernis uses black extensively in his works, shaping through “renouncement” and firing with “naturalness” . The combination of shape and glaze color explains the charm of simplicity.

 

Alain Vernis: Deep connection with Raku-yaki technique

The famous Raku-yaki technique of the Momoyama period in Japan in the 16th century is characterized by simplicity and naturalness. The seemingly "imperfect" works break the traditional aesthetic system of symmetry and glaze perfection, which is similar to Alain Vernis's works. Starting with a handful of clay, Alain focuses his perception on his hands and slowly kneads the bowl into shape, combining the beauty of form with the beauty of spirit. The surface of the bowl is either smooth or rough, with the glaze color bolding, and even natural flow appears. However, it was not until the 15th generation of Raku-yaki master invited him to Japan that he realized that he had such a deep connection with those masters of several centuries ago.

 

Alain Vernis was born in Sens, France in 1946 and currently lives and works in Morvan. His works have been exhibited in art institutions such as the Biracte Archaeological Museum in Burgundy, Guardian Art Center in China and Musée d‘art Moderne, Musée national de la Céramique, Musée de Bibracte, Musée Asrien Dubouché, Musée Bernard Palissy, Musée de Sarreguemines, Musée Joseph Séchelette in France.

HdM GALLERY

798 East Road, 798 Art District, No.2 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District, 100015 Beijing

hdmgallery.com

Sophie Calle: Public Places - Private Spaces, The Jewish Museum San Francisco

SOPHIE CALLE: PUBLIC PLACES – PRIVATE SPACES

The Jewish Museum San Francisco

March 7 – June 28, 2001

The Jewish Museum San Francisco presents SOPHIE CALLE: PUBLIC PLACES – PRIVATE SPACES. The show includes an installation of photographs and texts by French conceptual artist Sophie Calle and select pieces of Calle’s work from Bay Area collections. This is Calle’s first museum show in San Francisco. 

Director Connie Wolf said, “It is very exciting to have an internationally acclaimed artist such as Sophie Calle at The Jewish Museum San Francisco. Her art is consistently engaging and the work in this exhibition perfectly reflects the Museum’s mission - to approach Jewish issues and make them relevant in a contemporary world.”

Sophie Calle’s installation was inspired by the Orthodox tradition of eruv (literally meaning blend). An eruv is a symbolic boundary made of wires, string or neutral barriers, erected in and around observant Jewish communities. The tradition is a practical response to the religious prohibition against carrying objects outside of one’s home on the Sabbath. By transforming the space within it from public to private, the eruv establishes a collective property through which one can move as within a house. Essentially, the eruv expands the boundaries of the home.

Inspired by the tradition of eruv, the artist journeyed to Israel in the mid 90’s to interview 14 inhabitants of Jerusalem - Israelis and Palestinians – and asked each person to take her to a public place in that city they considered private. The intimate stories reveal ordinary public places that simultaneously exist as private places, all which lie within the boundaries of the Jerusalem eruv. Fourteen photographs and texts document the stories of the Jerusalem residents and 20 photographs follow the series of electric poles, wood and wire which comprise the Jerusalem eruv. Neither the texts nor the photographs disclose the cultural identity of the interviewee, and not knowing who is Jewish or Palestinian is a poetic commentary.

Sophie Calle sets up a conceptual connection to the eruv by investigating how individuals, both Jewish and Arab, religious and secular, transform space and make it their own. Issues around land, boundaries and religious law are common considering the contested nature of Jerusalem, but Sophie Calle has managed to infuse these with a compassion that elicits intimate reflection.

The stories and the accompanying photographs are both politically and personally charged: a photograph of a wall symbolizing the separation between people, a bench on which an admirer kept vigil and contemplated a love during the Six Day War, a street where a little girl was hit by a bus. The texts construct and inform the photographs and are simple and poignant. Reflecting on the bus accident the woman says “It’s been many years but I drive along here almost every day and I can’t help remembering everything. In a strange way I consider that piece of street mine. Part of my body remains there.”

Recently, the eruv tradition has been a controversial and political issue. Last year communities such as Palo Alto, California and Tenafly, New Jersey, battled in the courts over the legality of religious boundaries and have grappled with the issue of public v. private space. These recent eruv controversies that have erupted across the United States and been local news headliners, make this exhibition incredibly topical and important. For the past twenty years Calle has investigated private lives and made aspects of them public through her work. To allow for a more complete understanding of these issues in Calle’s oeuvre, the show includes selections of her work from Bay Area collections. Included are two pieces from The Sleepers (1979), a series where the artist invited others to sleep in her bed while she documented the various activities every hour on the hour. For eight straight days different people inhabited her bed and the photographs and texts of the event testify to her emerging interest in the voyeuristic aspects of photography. Also on view are two pieces from The Blind (1986), a series where Sophie Calle continued her atypical approach to photography by asking several people who had been born without sight to describe their image of beauty. She then photographed what the participants described. Several works from the Les Tombes (1990) and Autobiographical Stories (1992) series are also on view in this portion of the exhibition.

ARTIST’S BIOGRAPHY

Sophie Calle is one of France’s best known Conceptual artists. Born in 1953 and currently living in Paris, Calle has received wide acclaim in the U.S. for her collaboration with writer Paul Auster, which resulted in her piece Double Game and the publication of a book with the same title. Her last museum show in the Bay Area, Sophie Calle MATRIX/Berkeley 133, was curated by Larry Rinder and was held at the University of California Berkeley Art Museum in 1990. Recently she had exhibitions at the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris, the Camden Arts Center in London, and at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as part of the show The Museum as Muse.

SOPHIE CALLE: PUBLIC PLACES – PRIVATE SPACES was organized by The Jewish Museum San Francisco, with assistance by Natasha Boas Ph.D. The installation eruv is on loan from the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, Paris.

THE JEWISH MUSEUM SAN FRANCISCO

121 Steuart Street (between Mission and Howard Streets), San Francisco

www.jewishmuseumsf.org