Galerie Catherine Putman

The new exhibition of Eloïse van der Heyden’s work, Private Myth, aims to create a link between the inner and outer worlds, taking visitors on a journey between the profound and universal forest and our inner world. It puts forward the idea that everything exists within us: the history of humanity, myths, gods, hell, and the passage of time. The impact of the plant world on man and its reciprocity are linked to the issues explored by Eloïse Van der Heyden in her preceding exhibition at the gallery (‘Zakhar’ in 2015), in which the works tackled the themes of presence and absence, the revelation of memory, and origin through traces. Working through direct impressions, Eloïse Van der Heyden explores the theme of the forest— the source of life. Creating a vegetal environment that covers the gallery’s walls, made from trunks, leaves, and twigs, the artist has developed her own myths that are inextricably linked to those of humanity, creating an intimate and sensual garden in her drawings, watercolours, engravings, and ceramics. The second part of the exhibition focuses on a ‘book–object’. The book, intrinsically both container and content, continues this outer-inner exploration. With her ink impressions of plants, Eloïse Van der Heyden is not attempting to produce a herbarium, but rather to focus on the breath of the universe and our adherence to the world embodied by plants. To create this work she collaborated with the Italian philosopher Emanuele Coccia, who put words to the images, and wrote a text.