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
Solo exhibitions
2014
Galerie Pien Rademakers, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2013
Galerie Pien Rademakers, Amsterdam, Netherlands
From Plant to Plan… and vice-versa, Manufacture 284C, Marseille, France
Solo exhibitions
2014
Galerie Pien Rademakers, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2013
Galerie Pien Rademakers, Amsterdam, Netherlands
From Plant to Plan… and vice-versa, Manufacture 284C, Marseille, France
2011
Nature d’éclosion, Galerie Loft, Paris, France
2010-2011
Ati Art Gallery, New Delhi, India
2010
Galerie El Borj, Tunis, Tunisia
Plans et plantes, Galerie Mourlot, Marseille, France
Galerie JR Meyer, Marseille, France
2009
Rétroviseur, Hôtel de Sèvres, Paris, France
Galerie Cadratem, Marseille, France
2004-2007
Espace Castillon, Toulon, France
2004-2005
Galerie Park’Art, Marseille, France
Galerie Chaye, Honfleur, France
2003-2004
Galerie Carré d’Artistes, Aix-en-Provence, France
2002-2004
Irregular Artbeat Gallery, London, UK
2002
Galerie Art & Architecture, Paris, France
1999-2000
Matière de Lumière, Galerie Atelier Z, Paris, France
Group exhibitions
2025
Traits d’esprit, Galerie Loft, Paris, France
2024
The Earth is BLUE LIKE AN ORANGE, Galerie Loft, Paris, France
2022
ELLE(S), Galerie Loft, Paris, France
2019
Group Photo Exhibition, Chez Cuit-Cuit, Arles, France
2014
798 District Beijing, Beijing, China
Row Art Fair, Rotterdam, Netherlands
2013
Art Fair Realism Passenger Terminal, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Pan-Amsterdam, the Fair for Art, Antiques and Design, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2010
International Art Fair, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, India
Love & Peace, Global Art Foundation, Mumbai, India
Face-à-face with Ghislaine Giordano, Galerie JR Meyer, Marseille, France
2008-2009
Xocaotl, Chocolaterie Maino, Marseille, France
2008
1st Mediterranean Symposium of Environmental Art, Crete
Château de Servières, Marseille, France
The Cinétics #1, L’Abribus, Marseille, France
2007-2010
Fondation CARI, Carros, France
2007
L’Artisan Parfumeur, Marseille, France
The Relaxation Room, Marseille, France
Work in progress #4, L’Abribus, Marseille, France
2006
Art in the Company, Nextecsysteme, Marseille, France
4th Mediterranean Biennale of Arts of 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
Artists in the City, Ecume, Marseille, France
For Sale: Château de Servières, Marseille, France
2003
Off Festival: Nomad Chronicles, 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