Josephine de Saint Seine
Joséphine de Saint-Seine, born in Paris in 1974, grew up in Apremont, a small village in Picardy and now lives and works in Marseille. She develops progressive work around the exploration of the origins of beings and the elements that make up our planet. It feeds on shapes and textures, materials and sensations, the symbolism of colors and the unpredictability of ink touching paper, lines and evanescence, but also the medicinal virtues of plants, the physical virtues and spiritual ones of modeling, and those, poetic and mental ones of writing.
Works
Quelque part entre ciel et terre
Paysages imaginaires (yellow)
Paysages imaginaires (violet)
Paysages imaginaires (red / orange)
Paysages imaginaires
Only Love is Real – Schubert’s Garlic
Monnaie du Pape
Coquelicot
Biography
Joséphine de Saint-Seine, born in Paris in 1974, grew up in Apremont, a small village in Picardy and now lives and works in Marseille. Initially favoring oil painting, from 2016 she devoted herself to natural inks (Indian ink and vegetable inks that she designed herself).
Joséphine de Saint-Seine, born in Paris in 1974, grew up in Apremont, a small village in Picardy and now lives and works in Marseille. Initially favoring oil painting, from 2016 she devoted herself to natural inks (Indian ink and vegetable inks that she designed herself).
She therefore develops progressive work around the exploration of the origins of beings and the elements that make up our planet. It feeds on shapes and textures, materials and sensations, the symbolism of colors and the unpredictability of ink touching paper, lines and evanescence, but also the medicinal virtues of plants, the physical virtues and spiritual ones of modeling, and those, poetic and mental ones of writing…
From the Earth, as from the sky…
A true “alchemist”, she thus uses many media to manage to express the sensations she feels in the world around her: plants, textiles, blown glass, installations, video, clay… so many materials that offer us each work a piece of her being…
On the canvases, plants in different stages of hatching are painted in oil on technical planes, evoking the poetry of the immaterial that germinates from the tangible world. Their plant forms invade the surface of the canvas in a hybrid and plural language where writing and image are intrinsically linked. Sublime and fragile, tinged with a carnal and delicious dimension, sometimes lascivious and offered, sometimes mysterious and impenetrable, they are always marked by a precious touch and a finesse inspired by calligraphy and engraving. From industrial architecture emerges a plant architecture whose flowers, delicate and piercing, touch us and insinuate themselves into us. They imbue us with a skin-deep emotion, like the blossoming of a plant world that comes to reclaim its rights, those of the nourishing and pregnant earth, the ultimate link between all men.
From the Origin land, to the Matter land, there was only one step. Joséphine de Saint-Seine crosses it by creating small worlds, to be taken in the palm of our palm and caressed with the tips of our fingers. Its clay weights and beechnuts are modeled, dried, fired, polished and engraved according to a long process that makes them so unique. These “to touch” works, enamelled, patinated or polished, are as many universes to explore in our turn. Populated with clouds, mountains, flowers and lines of life, their furrows are strewn with gold pigments inherited from the tradition of Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pieces of pottery with gold to sublimate their imperfections.
Like this ancestral art, the work of Joséphine de Saint-Seine is conceived in an organic and “medicinal” vision of a whole, where each element has its own history and can bring us a lot. For the artist “it is above all the “care” that interests me. Both that of plants (she herself makes natural creams from plants that she cultivates), but also works. It’s also a treatment. We need beauty, we need touch, we need to be connected to things that take us out of everything there is oppressive around us”.
Exhibitions
Career
PERSONAL EXHIBITIONS
2014
Pien Rademakers Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2013
Pien Rademakers Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Du plant au Plan… et vice-versa, Manufacture 284C, Marseille, France
2011
Nature d’éclosion, Loft Gallery, Paris, France
2010–2011
Ati Art Gallery, New Delhi, India
PERSONAL EXHIBITIONS
2014
Pien Rademakers Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2013
Pien Rademakers Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Du plant au Plan… et vice-versa, Manufacture 284C, Marseille, France
2011
Nature d’éclosion, Loft Gallery, Paris, France
2010–2011
Ati Art Gallery, New Delhi, India
2010
El Borj Gallery, Tunis, Tunisia
Plans et plantes, Mourlot Gallery, Marseille, France
JR Meyer Gallery, Marseille, France
2009
Rétroviseur, Hôtel de Sèvres, Paris, France
Cadratem Gallery, Marseille, France
2004–2007
Espace Castillon, Toulon, France
2004–2005
Park’Art Gallery, Marseille, France
Chaye Gallery, Honfleur, France
2003–2004
Carré d’Artistes Gallery, Aix en Provence, France
2002–2004
Irregular Artbeat Gallery, London, UK
2002
Art & Architecture Gallery, Paris, France
1999–2000
Matière de Lumière, Atelier Z Gallery, Paris, France
COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS
2025
Traits d’esprit, Galerie Loft, Paris, France
2024
La Terre est BLEUE COMME UNE ORANGE, Galerie Loft, Paris, France
2022
ELLE(S), Gallery LOFT, Paris, France
2019
Chez Cuit-Cuit Gallery, Arles, France
2014
798 District Beijing, Beijing, China
Row Art Fair, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
2013
Art Fair Realism Passenger Terminal, Amsterdam,The Netherlands
Pan-Amsterdam the Fair for Art, Antiques and Design, Amsterdam,The Netherlands
2010
International Art Fair, Prafati Maidan, New Delhi, India
Love & Peace, Global Art Foundation, Mumbai, India
Face-à-face avec Ghislaine Giordano, JR Mayer Gallery, Marseille, France
2008–2009
Xocaotl, Chocolaterie Maino, Marseille, France
2008
1st Mediterranean Symposium of Environmental Art, Crete
Château de Servières, Marseille, France
Les Cinétics #1, L’Abribus, Marseille, France
2007–2010
Fondation CARI, Carros, France
2007
L’Artisan Parfumeur, Marseille, France
La Case Détente, Marseille, France
Work in progress #4, L’Abribus, Marseille, France
2006
L’art dans l’entreprise, Nextecsysteme, Marseille, France
4e biennale méditérranéenne des Arts de Tunis, Musée de la ville de Tunis, Tunisia
L’Abribus : Palais de Maeterlinck, Nice, France
Work in progress #2, L’Abribus, Marseille, France
2005
Casa Maria, Marseille, France
Artistes dans la ville, Ecume, Marseille, France
A vendre : Château de Servières, Marseille, France
2003
Festival Off : chroniques Nomades, Honfleur, France
2001
The Royal institute of Oil Painters, 114th Exhibition, Mall Gallery, London, UK
Salon des Artistes Français, Espace Auteuil, Paris, France
1997-2000
Salon d’art contemporain, Dammarie-les-Lys, France