Le repaire de la méduse. Brecht Evens. Atelier Michael Woolworth. Paris. December 8, 2022 - March 4, 2023.
A selling exhibition of Brecht Even's latest work is currently on display at the Atelier Michael Woolworth, which is located a stone's throw from the Place de la Bastille in Paris. Billed as a series of woodcuts, etchings and lithographs from 2020-2023, this collection features a series of 50 unreleased images that will eventually appear in Evens' forthcoming book Le Roi méduse, to be published by Actes Sud BD in 2024.
The world of lithography is not an entirely new venture for Evens as he previously worked with the Atelier Michael Woolworth in 2016 for the Artist's Edition of his book on Paris in the Louis Vuitton Travel Books series. Evens mentioned that his deep dive into lithography at the Atelier served as a coping response to the strict confinement regulations during the Covid-19 lockdowns in Paris, and that learning about the process and experimenting with these new techniques in a fully equipped studio that exclusively uses hand presses served as creative inspiration during uncertain times.
The pieces on display, all available in limited editions of 25-40 prints, suggest that Evens is an able student who not only grasped the science behind lithography but who has also found ways to apply his unique linework and color palette into the process. Individually, each piece is an impressive marvel of detail, scale and labour, especially the larger multicolor pieces. That said, it is also a rare opportunity to see Brecht Evens' work in strict black and white via the lithographic process. Collectively, the pieces show an artist open to expanding his technical acumen to display his new experiments in the very environment that they were hand-produced, with all of the tools, machinery and paper stock in plain unarranged sight.
All of the pieces in the show are scanned and listed on the Michael Woolworth website with their individual titles, price, edition number, technique and support information included. Below are photos that were taken at the packed vernissage of the exhibition, taken and arranged in the order of their installation inside the studio.
-Nick Nguyen
All photos taken by Nick Nguyen
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