Sylvie Eyberg

these butterfly shades

Name: these butterfly shades - Sylvie Eyberg
Brand: Keijiban
Price: 75.000000 EUR
Availability: InStock

2023

Offset printing

Folded: 17.5 x 26 cm / Unfolded: 69.6 x 52 cm

Edition of 50 copies numbered and stamped-signed by the artist, plus 3 artist’s proofs, 3 publisher’s proofs and 10 hors-commerce copies

Price

€75.00

Tax included・Free shipping in Japan

The edition

Sylvie Eyberg discovered the title of this edition in the writings of Virginia Woolf, a central figure for the artist. In a passage of her diary, the British author praised Marcel Proust for “his combination of the utmost sensibility with the utmost tenacity, [searching out] these butterfly shades to the last grain.” In fact, Eyberg would probably say as much to describe the writings of Woolf. And we in turn could say the same about Eyberg’s precise work, so much so that the metaphor appears to work like a Russian doll.

Yet, quoting Woolf and therefore Proust is not really a matter of “reference,” in the sense of calling in inspirational figures and borrowing some of their power. Rather, it points out a certain notion of “intertextuality,” the idea that any text is filled with other texts to which they relate in various ways, deliberately or not. Sylvie Eyberg’s visual and literary practice indeed consists of exploring existing printed material and carefully selecting letters, words, and fragments of images which she reconfigures freely to form lyrical and enigmatic compositions.

For these butterfly shades, the artist reveals, using double-page spreads of a film magazine as a base, the presence of Woolf’s words in paragraphs otherwise dedicated to Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Nagisa Oshima. Carved into the pages, the letters line up to form words and then sentences that recreate fragments of her writings, like a hidden subtext. Not only do the words become visual through their spatialization on the page, but they are also penetrated by the history of cinema, thus showing the inextricable, inexhaustible interplay of text and image.

The artist

Sylvie Eyberg シルヴィ・エイベルグ — Photo: Denicolai & Provoost

Sylvie Eyberg was born in 1963. She currently lives in Brussels (Belgium).

Since the late 1980s, Sylvie Eyberg has worked on the interplay of images and words. She is mostly known for her precise and enigmatic combinations of black and white or monochromatic pictures with fragments of texts. Both elements usually come from magazines, books, and other printed material, and are then carefully selected and reframed, sometimes enlarged.

In some way related to the tradition of photomontage, these works express a strong sense of composition. The black and white tonality and the scarcity of depicted elements also contribute to a sense of austerity. But at the same time, the viewers/readers will quickly find themselves absorbed into the very texture of images and words. Magnetized by the muffled indetermination that permeates the works, they try to make sense of the suspended gestures and accidental aphorisms, the dreamlike figures and the poetic stuttering.

In addition to these works made using a wide range of printing techniques (photography, silkscreen, heliogravure, inkjet, and offset, among others), the artist has produced a series of films that extend and displace her interest into the relation of images to literature. These films are also an affectionate homage to cinema, to its rich history and its ability to fire up our imagination.

Let us also mention that Sylvie Eyberg generously conceived the text-work that serves as Keijiban’s logo—a carefully carved paragraph from a text dedicated to Ozu’s Tokyo Story.

At the invitation of curator Thierry de Duve, she represented Belgium at the Venice Biennale in 2003, together with Valérie Mannaerts.

Her recent shows include Spatial Bias, Lesage, Brussels, Belgium, 2021; Vu.e de dos, Le Delta, Namur, Belgium, 2020; Half-title, Shanaynay, Paris, France, 2018; descendant, Institut de Carton, Brussels, Belgium, 2018; 2. bleu et vert, (SIC), Brussels, Belgium, 2014.

Sylvie Eyberg is represented by Galerie Greta Meert in Brussels.

The exhibition