Nature Immortelle | Zatorski + Zatorski | Juliette Losq |Olivia Kemp - 13th March - 5th April 2025
Still Life is also known as Nature Morte – in French, literally Dead Nature. Yet from its earliest beginnings, Nature Morte was anything but. Artistic depictions of inanimate objects were full of symbolism, driven by the idea that earthly things could speak to us about matters sublime. ‘Nature Immortelle’ looks at these immortal aspirations through the work of Zatorski + Zatorski, Juliette Losq, and Olivia Kemp.
Juliette Losq’s paintings take the concept of Still Life and extend it into landscape painting. Her scenes of dilapidated industrial hinterlands are only partially real: though based on physical places, they are just as much visual constructions to enchant the viewer in the tradition of optical devices such as the paper peepshow. Scenes of rampant nature are layered with architectural constructions, all of which appear as if underwater. The large monochrome ‘Capriccio II’ shows this working process depicted as a giant trompe l’oeil. Juliette’s sources are laid out as if on a workspace, fragmented and disjointed, tendrils from one somehow already sprawling beyond their limits to intertwine with the other papers. The mammoth painting ‘Diluvian’ presents the result of this process: a cryptic scene of an overgrown waterway where each conceptual space cascades through the next. It delves ever downwards into a grotto-like world of uncontrolled nature where the ordered constructs of society become subsumed and overwhelmed. This treatment of landscape as Still Life disrupts the comfortable conceit of nature as scenery, instead tapping into something more eternal and primeval.
James Freeman Gallery
354 Upper Street
Islington
London
N1 0PD
T: +44(0)20 7226 3300
info@jamesfreemangallery.com
Opening times: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 – 6:30, and outside these times by chance or by appointment. The hours are subject to change, so please phone ahead if you are travelling specifically to visit.
