Neurone Miroir, Eva Taulois - Parvis du Musée d'Arts - Nantes

With Neurone Miroir, Eva Taulois takes over the window display on the forecourt of the Musée d’arts de Nantes, in close dialogue with its neo-classical architecture: columns, sculpted allegories, frozen draperies. But where stone freezes, the artist introduces fluidity, suppleness and movement.

The title of the work refers to a fascinating scientific concept: mirror neurons. These brain cells are activated not only when we perform an action, but also when we see someone else doing it. They are the source of our capacity for empathy, mimicry and observational learning. In the context of a museum – a place of history, of gestures passed on, of gazes that learn – this concept is particularly resonant. It suggests a work that observes and reflects, that absorbs and replay, that mirrors references, that draws inspiration from and digests what has gone before to produce new forms.

Eva Taulois’s installation is made up of anthropomorphic forms, non-figurative silhouettes that soar, embrace, gather and collapse. The bodies are there, suggested in curves, drapes, supple volumes, envelopes, but never realistically represented.

Echoing this, the artist enters the museum’s permanent tour, in the heart of the ancient art collections, to create an unexpected dialogue between his works and those of the 17^th century, notably those by Philippe de Champaigne. Draping, folds, vivid colors and contrasts become points of contact between eras, revealing the pictorial roots of a work that, while unfolding in space, never ceases to speak of painting.