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| Selva by Eva Jospin - Photo: Cat Bauer |
(Venice, Italy) I arrived at Palazzo Fortuny just a few minutes before the press conference for Selva started. I was eager to see the show. The invitation to the exhibition on the ground floor, or portego, of Palazzo Fortuny by the French artist, Eva Jospin, had caught my attention. ("Selva" translates to "woods.")
I wanted to get a taste of the exhibit before heading upstairs to the press conference on the top floor of the palace. So first I dashed through a magical fairy-tale forest created from intricately carved cardboard and wood, framed with silk embroidery. The vast Fortuny portego had become more intimate with the addition of the fanciful forest.
Then I climbed up the rickety steps to the top floor of Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei, otherwise known as Palazzo Fortuny.
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| Silk panels by Mariano Fortuny - Photo: Cat Bauer |
If you've ever been to Palazzo Fortuny, you know the stairs are wooden, steep, and creaky. What is called the first floor in Italy, would be the second floor in the States. And it takes two flights of stairs to reach the next floor. So, by the time I got to the second floor, I stopped to catch my breath.
At the top of the stairs were three silk panels that I had never really noticed before.
"Are those part of the exhibition?" I asked one of the attendants.
"No," she smiled. "Those are by Fortuny."
"Oh!" The logic of the exhibition tumbled into place. "Eva Jospin seems right at home."
I grasped in a flash why the press release had stressed the dialogue between Fortuny and Jospin, two foreigners bewitched by the 15th century late Gothic Renaissance architecture of Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei.
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| Silk embroidery by Eva Jospin - Photo: Cat Bauer |
Just a quick glimpse of the tangible tapestries explained the rather wordy press release:
“The works at the Fortuny Museum in Venice... dialogue not only with the historical and environmental context that hosts them, Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei, but... the artistic production of Mariano Fortuny.
A dialogue that allows unexpected aesthetic and operational affinities to emerge between the poetics of the two interpreters: a continuous comparison and reference between Jospin and Fortuny on Nature, on creative and experimental processes, which find their maximum expression both in the conception and research on fabric, as well as in the study of artifice and scenic fiction, always inherent to the theatrical universe, constantly reflecting on the themes of perspective, proportions and the visual and emotional relationship between artistic creation and spectator.”
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| Silk embroidery by Eva Jospin (detail) - Photo: Cat Bauer |
Or, as they say, "one silk panel is worth a thousand words."
I had a terrific conversation with Eva Jospin about her creative process, and how she progressed from painting -- "I was not a good painter" -- to sculpting magical lands out of cardboard, which slowly grew bigger and more elaborate until now an entire whimsical new world fills the portego of Palazzo Fortuny.
Jospin's work is utterly distinct. I really liked her, and enjoyed wandering through the wondrous world she has created. I found out that we shared the same birthday, July 27, and are lionesses.
Later, at a cocktail party on the other side of town, I was chatting with a French gallerist, who told me that Eva's father was Lionel Jospin, the former Prime Minister of France. To me, that wise inheritance explained the knowledge woven into the works. The gallerist said, ‘But Eva Jospin is a talent in her own right."
Indeed she is.
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| Mariacristina Gribaudi, President of Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia & artist Eva Jospin Photo: Cat Bauer |
The mystical Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei casts its spell on many foreigners, as well as Venetians. There is magic woven into the ceilings, the floors, and the walls. You can feel the spirit of Mariano Fortuny so strongly that you almost expect to find him sitting behind his desk. Selva adds another element of enchantment.
Curated by Chiara Squarcina and Pier Paolo Pancotto, you can wander through Selva and Palazzo Fortuny until November 24, 2024. Go to Palazzo Fortuny for more information.
Ciao from Venezia,
Cat Bauer
Venetian Cat - The Venice Blog
