Eva Taulois

With NEURONE MIROIR, Eva Taulois takes over the window display on the forecourt of the Musée d'arts de Nantes, in close dialogue with its neo-classical architecture: columns, sculpted allegories, frozen draperies. But where stone freezes, the artist introduces fluidity, suppleness and movement.

The title of the work refers to a fascinating scientific concept: mirror neurons. These brain cells are activated not only when we perform an action, but also when we see someone else doing it. They are the source of our capacity for empathy, mimicry and observational learning. In the context of a museum - a place of history, of gestures passed on, of gazes that learn - this concept is particularly resonant. It suggests a work that observes and reflects, that absorbs and replay, that mirrors references, that draws inspiration from and digests what has gone before to produce new forms.

Eva Taulois's installation is made up of anthropomorphic forms, non-figurative silhouettes that soar, embrace, gather and collapse. The bodies are there, suggested in curves, drapes, supple volumes, envelopes, but never realistically represented.

The textile used - translucent, supple, almost gelatinous - reinforces this impression of living matter. In places, color emerges from within, like a flow of energy or blood, activated by the light and transparency of the fabric.

The chromatic range, a central element of Eva Taulois' work, here enlivens the sculpture with subtle, washed-out, milky nuances, like states of mind or bodily rhythms. Pink, orange, blue, green, but also softer or more diffuse hues: color doesn't clothe the form, it emanates from it. It is pulsation.

Echoing this, the artist enters the museum's permanent tour, in the heart of the ancient art collections, to create an unexpected dialogue between his works and those of the ^17th century, notably those by Philippe de Champaigne. Draping, folds, vivid colors and contrasts become points of contact between eras, revealing the pictorial roots of a work that, while unfolding in space, never ceases to speak of painting.

Sculptures, paintings, textiles, installations or scenographic devices, Eva Taulois' work unfolds in a wide variety of media and formats. Her universe is populated by ambiguous objects, both strange and familiar, whose simple, uncluttered forms evoke an abstract, minimalist vocabulary. Her work draws on a broad spectrum of references, from architecture to traditional clothing, from patchwork art to design, to construct a plastic language rooted in matter.

Eva Taulois questions painting beyond the frame, the pedestal as much as the sculpture. The exhibition becomes the stage for objects charged with chromatic tension, where the material is a pictorial surface with bold colors, glossy or matte textures, the synthetic sheen of vinyl, the downy texture of velvet. These sculptural paintings are composed of forms that often enter into conversation.