01 JoanaEscoval_LaCriee

Joana Escoval, Neither bounded nor static, 2016

visual identity © Lieux Communs

courtesy de l’artiste et de Véra Cortês art agency, Lisbonne

02 Joana-Escoval-Neither-bounded-nor-static

Joana Escoval, Neither bounded nor static, exhibition view, Lichens Never LieLa Criée centre for contemporary art, rennes, 2016

photo: Bruno Lopes

courtesy l’artiste et Vera Cortês art agency, Lisbonne

04 2-2016_2_escoval_DSC_0480_3840

Joana Escoval, Rational or irrational or rational or, 2015, exhibition view, Lichens Never LieLa Criée centre for contemporary art, rennes, 2016

photo: Bruno Lopes

courtesy l’artiste et Vera Cortês art agency, Lisbonne

09 6-2016_2_escoval_DSC_0403_3840

Joana Escoval, Our myth is not self-evident because it is a mystery, 2015, exhibition view Lichens Never Lie, La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2016

photo : Benoît Mauras

courtesy l’artiste et Vera Cortês art agency, Lisbonne

10 7-2016_2_escoval_DSC_0406_3840

Joana Escoval, Our myth is not self-evident because it is a mystery (détail), 2015,exhibition view Lichens Never Lie, La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2016

photo : Benoît Mauras

courtesy l’artiste et Vera Cortês art agency, Lisbonne

11 9-2016_2_escoval_DSC_0400_3840

Joana Escoval, Untitled (for André), 2015, exhibition view Lichens Never Lie, La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2016

photo: Benoît Mauras

courtesy l’artiste et Vera Cortês art agency, Lisbonne

12 10-2016_2_escoval_DSC_0396_3840

Joana Escoval, Untitled (for André), 2015, exhibition view Lichens Never Lie, La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2016

photo: Benoît Mauras

courtesy l’artiste et Vera Cortês art agency, Lisbonne

13 8-2016_2_escoval_DSC_0471_3840

Joana Escoval, Untitled (for André), 2015, exhibition view Lichens Never Lie, La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2016

photo: Benoît Mauras

courtesy l’artiste et Vera Cortês art agency, Lisbonne

2016_2_escoval_2_5442_photo_p_castra_960

Joana Escoval, There is a fake stone among the other ones, exhibition view Lichens Nevers Lie, La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2016

production: La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes

photo: Pauline Castra

2016_2_escoval_2_0503_3840_960

Joana Escoval, There is a fake stone among the other ones, exhibition view Lichens Nevers Lie, La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2016

production: La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes

photo: Benoît Mauras

2016_2_escoval_1_5361_photo_p_castra_960

Joana Escoval, Impossible obéissance, exhibition view Lichens Nevers Lie, La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2016

production: La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes

photo: Benoît Mauras

2016_2_escoval_1_0527_3840_960

Joana Escoval, Impossible obéissance, exhibition view Lichens Nevers Lie, La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2016

production: La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes

photo: Benoît Mauras

2016_2_escoval_1_0444_3840_960

Joana Escoval, Impossible obéissance, exhibition view Lichens Nevers Lie, La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2016

production: La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes

photo: Benoît Mauras

2016_2_escoval_1_0377_3840_960

Joana Escoval, Impossible obéissance, exhibition view Lichens Nevers Lie, La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes, 2016

production: La Criée centre for contemporary art, Rennes

photo: Benoît Mauras

Exhibition

Lichens Never Lie

Joana Escoval


Lichens Never Lie is Joana Escoval’s first solo exhibition outside the Iberian Peninsula. Here the young Lisbon artist gives spare, fragile expression to the endless ephemerality of the living world and its host of mysterious meanings.

The product of minimal intervention on her part, Escoval’s works are most often assemblages of materials that are rudimentary – pieces of wood, copper rods, terracotta, etc. – and/or collected from the natural world: leaves, water, stones and sometimes whole trees.

Escoval is especially attentive to her venues and the visible and invisible currents running through them, which she sees as integral to what is being shown. Her La Criée exhibition is a response to both the setting and the airy summer light that pervades it.

Mostly comprising works being shown for the first time, Lichens Never Lie revolves around the notions of passage, transition and transmission: from one state to another, one belief or knowledge system to another, one culture to another, and so on.

Thus certain pieces – Keep Going and Our myth is not self evident because it is a mystery for example – indicate pathways that are possible but always open-ended, while others, like Rational or Irrational or Rational or, mark a tenuous, sometimes all but invisible threshold.
Still others investigate the boundaries between Nature and Culture, or between different cultures, the better to evoke their intertwining – or their effacement. In the case of Neither Bounded nor Static and Untitled (for André) it would be pointless to try to work out whether the non-human is being anthropomorphised or, on the contrary, the human is being “naturalised”.

The exhibition title, discovered by the artist on a sign in a pharmacognosy and mycology lab at the University of Rennes 1, refers to an organism that is both algae and fungus, and acknowledges its capacity to act. This speaks eloquently of the porousness of things and beings, and of their representation as a core part of the artist’s work and concerns.

The things Joana Escoval makes are at once evocative enough to offer our ideas ready purchase and development and nebulous enough to let them roam free: open works for savage minds, one might say.



2016_2_escoval_1_0377_3840_960

Produced works

Joana Escoval

  • Impossible obéissance, 2016
  • There is a fake stone among the other ones, 2016
JE_Performance_Press

Green Flash

It arises not from any cause, but from the cooperation of many

Joana Escoval

24 June 2016

6:30pm

FLF_signature_ART_AU_CENTRE_BD-ea53f

Season

Fendre les Flots

Ariane Michel

from September 2015 to August 2016