VNH Gallery is delighted to announce the solo exhibition by Eleonore False entitled “Needs” (2 May - 15 June 2019) in our Project space. Used as an introduction, a collage (Statement, 2019) asserts a few notions which are essential to the artist’s practice such as surrealism, proprioception and the notion of scale, while inviting the visitor to venture inside a space guided by the simplicity of a finger pointing the way.

From the exhibition’s title emerge different ideas essential to the body, either human or organic, as well as inseparable from it, from its needs, its desires and its vital necessities. This body here enlighten by the artist is solely represented fragmented equally through its form and construction (decomposed, deconstructed, divided) than through what it is made of and what makes it live (water, breath, desire, the space in which it exists). Thus, the viewer ends up losing his rational knowledge and seeks the apprehension of a transformed world he doesn’t recognize.

Éléonore False gleans image fragments in books. She cuts them, enlarges them in a game of scale and volume in order to offer physical connections to the viewer, distinct with each work and using an unprecedented choice of colours for the artist. Juggling with motifs, one same fragment can be placed in different situations from one work to another and the printed fields enable the feel of textile, echoing our need to dress.

Following that idea, a first series of small format collages entitled Camouflage (2017-2019) take interest in the survival techniques a body develops in the context of a hostile nature, while two enlarged flowers (Flower, 2019) question our scale. At the centre of this exhibition, Air (2019), is the heart of an exploded body rebuilt by the different elements presented, from physical components to natural needs, all crucial to the body’s very existence.

Éléonore False presents her glass pieces for the first time, their sensuality existing as early as the title, such as It Rained, and I Got Wet (2019) or Site (2019) which plays with the idea of the event, the place and the encounter. She reinterprets existing mushrooms while avoiding the copy, interrogating the fact of miming a natural process as well as the traditional savoir-faire of blown glass. Indeed, the medium then offers the possibility to touch upon organic esthetics, these mimed mushrooms’ outgrowths and strange curves, prone to evolve in nature whereas here frozen into a form they resemble but don’t conform to anymore. Everyday objects are moreover employed to support these glass pieces, extending their discourse inside a mental space related to the domestic. The tile, the pitcher or the broom are thus diverted from their initial role: conveying water, the roof and the domestic space, they are granted another importance inside an ambiguous play. Éléonore False was born in 1987 in Paris (France) where she currently lives and works.