The daughter of two architects, Claude Eigan allows a strong architectural and cartographical influence to permeate her work. She is drawn to “non-places-” places void of human presence, places with no names or locations. The deconstruction of physical context resurfaces through her artistic canon in the form of abandoned landscapes, organized chaos, and bold geometric structures that embody an illusionary map-like quality.
These following images are from three distinct bodies of work: “Notions of Place,” “The Lost Impressions” and “120 DB Sunset.”
Notions of Place uses materials borrowed from the domain of architecture (marble, granit, old letrasets decals…) and readapted into a new deconstructed landscape; one of organized chaos.
The Lost Impressions works with landscape paintings found at a flea market. These unsigned and untitled images, many of them badly damaged, spiked Eigan’s curiosity as representations of places that have been lost and forgotten. After painting over them with gesso and pen a new curiosity emerges from the perspective of the viewer- the desire to know what was underneath the painted sections. Textual descriptions of what lies beneath the gesso surface spark the imagination and inspire the onlooker to create a mental picture of the original landscape.
120 DB Sunset was created using 3000 foam earplugs, sorted by colour and shade, and fixed with resin onto two broken pieces of wall. The bright composition is evocative of the Pointillist technique, with a cartographic twist.
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“What’s left after all is gone?
The wall has come down with violence, only fragments of it remains visible.
Out of these left-overs, a muted landscape appears : a sunset over green mountains with such unnatural colours that it doesn’t seem real. The loudness of the world is gone, there is only nature, only a timeless landscape. An anechoic scene that contrast with the initial act of destruction : a quiet violence, a post-chaos silence.”
-Claude Eigan
Claude Eigan (born in France, 1983) is a visual artist living and working in Berlin. After studying visual communications in Paris, she worked for 6 years as a graphic designer for a variety of international brands. Since 2012, she’s been focusing on her art. Her work has been exhibited in Paris and Berlin.
LINKS :
WWW.CLAUDEEIGAN.COM