Category: drawing

Presenting ten years of notebooks, in which Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck shares her daily life through drawings, following the rhythm of nature, her garden, and the familiar faces around her.

Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck has been drawing in sketchbooks for as long as she can remember, in the manner of a diary to which she confides her everyday life. A daily practice that mirrors the tender care she gives to her garden, a vibrant place that plays an essential role in her life and artistic practice.

In these sketchbooks, shapes and colours intermingle in a delicate and joyful harmony. It’s her intimate world that Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck reveals in her drawings, many of which are created en plein-air in just a few minutes. The simplicity of grey pencil strokes meets field flowers held in one hand and where familiar faces meet small animals, like Lemon, the canary with whom she lives.

To delve into ten years of notebooks, kept from 2014 to 2024, is to encounter the abundant and multifaceted work of an artist who invites us to observe the ordinary with an insatiable appetite.

An in-depth conversation between Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck and Cécile Poimbœuf-Koizumi completes the selection of drawings.

Presenting ten years of notebooks, in which Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck shares her daily life through drawings, following the rhythm of nature, her garden, and the familiar faces around her.

Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck has been drawing in sketchbooks for as long as she can remember, in the manner of a diary to which she confides her everyday life. A daily practice that mirrors the tender care she gives to her garden, a vibrant place that plays an essential role in her life and artistic practice.

In these sketchbooks, shapes and colours intermingle in a delicate and joyful harmony. It’s her intimate world that Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck reveals in her drawings, many of which are created en plein-air in just a few minutes. The simplicity of grey pencil strokes meets field flowers held in one hand and where familiar faces meet small animals, like Lemon, the canary with whom she lives.

To delve into ten years of notebooks, kept from 2014 to 2024, is to encounter the abundant and multifaceted work of an artist who invites us to observe the ordinary with an insatiable appetite.

An in-depth conversation between Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck and Cécile Poimbœuf-Koizumi completes the selection of drawings.

Constance Guisset’s pencil drawings are coloured spectrums and forms that move slowly, almost like ghosts floating across the white, then black, space of the page.

Constance Guisset draws. Oftentimes at the studio, as a starting point for an idea that will turn into a design object or scenography. But drawing also comes along as time stands still, away from any duty or purpose. It is not about drawing at work anymore, but drawing to break free. Corps flottants is a series born out of this spontaneity: it was at the sea that these “ghosts of lockdown”, as Constance Guisset likes to call them, first took shape. This book, deliberately exempt of any text, offers a space of free expression for these pencil drawings. Mischievous and colourful ghosts float and shift throughout the pages, until they become illuminated bodies on pitch black pages. As one puts the book away, the drawings leave an imprint on the vision, like the evidence of a memory that even the motion of the sea cannot completely wipe out.

An unexpected collection of over 100 images spanning the history of representations, Jeux de mains (sculpted, molded, photographed, or painted) is like a treasure chest of this marvelous five-fingered tool.

Most artists have, at some point, represented the universal symbol of creation which is the hand. Many of them have also chosen the hand as a recurring pattern in their work. This observation inspired Cécile Poimboeuf-Koizumi — editor and founder of Chose Commune — to gather the works that caught her attention in a book, following no thematic or chronological order. The selection was made in collaboration with Stephen Ellcock, who has made a name for himself over the past few years for bringing the art gallery directly to people with his glorious collection of images which he shares everyday on Instagram and Facebook. From Pablo Picasso to Helena Almeida, from Louise Bourgeois to Alberto Giacometti, from John Baldessari to Francesca Woodman, and comprising a multitude of treasures from the ancient ages to documents from popular imagery, Jeux de mains confronts and mixes famous, emerging and anonymous artists from a wide-range of practices. The result is a collection of more than a hundred images compiled intuitively in this book.

Note: This is a French-folded book. The pages are not meant to be cut. By gently part-opening the pages and looking inside, you will discover information about each of the artworks.

List of artists:

ALBARRÀN CABRERA — ALBIN-GUILLOT  Laure — ALMEIDA Helena —  ÁLVAREZ BRAVO Manuel —  AUBÖCK Carl — BALDESSARI John — BALLEN Roger — BARK Jared — BAUGHAN Rosa —BERNHARD Ruth — BLUMENFELD Erwin — BORREMANS Michaël — BOUCHER Pierre — BOURGEOIS Louise  — BUONAROTTI Michelangelo — CAHUN Claude — CALLE Sophie — CARAFA Giovanni — CHIEH-JEN Chen — CLARK Harold T. — CUDDON Katie — DE BLAUWER Katrien — DE MOÜY Iris — DEGAS Edgar — DIEULEFILS Pierre — DILL Lesley —DYKE William — EDGERTON Harold — GHIRRI Luigi — GIACOMETTI Alberto — GIBSON Ralph — GILL Simryn — GORDON Daniel — GUITTARD Alice — GUSTON Philip — GUÉRARD Henri Charles — HIROSHIGE Utagawa — HOLBEIN (Le Jeune) Hans — HOPPÉ Emil Otto — INGRES Jean-Auguste-Dominique — ISHIUCHI MIYAKO — ITURBIDE Graciela — JEEWON KIM Shantal — KAWAUCHI Rinko — KEITH ROACH Clementine — KERTÉSZ André — LEPPÄLÄ Anni — LOTAR Eli — L’ADMIRAL Jan — MAURER Dora — MELOTTI Fausto — MICHALS Duane — MINKINNEN Arno — MOHOLY-NAGY Lazslo — MORELLI Giovanni  — MUNARI Bruno — MUÑOZ Oscar — NADAR Félix — NESHAT Shirin — ONES Fiona — O’BRIEN John — PARADIN Claude — PESCE Gaetano — PICASSO Pablo — PINARD Guillaume — PÉTROVITCH Françoise — RAY Man — RICHTER Gerhard — ROCHAS-PÀRIS Lia — RODIN Auguste — SCHIELE Egon — SHOVLIN Jamie — STEINBERG Saul — STIEGLITZ Alfred — SUDA Issei — TARABELLA Philippe — UEMATSU Keiji — VON MENZEL Adolf Frierdrich Erd-mann — VRELANT Willem — WAESE Alice — WATSON Claire — WHITE CO H.C WILHELMUS COUWENBERG Henricus — WOODMAN Francesca — YOGANANTHAN Vasantha

“L’homme penché à l’oiseau” is a limited edition lithograph by Alexandra Duprez, the painter behind the cover of our book “Jeux de mains”. Born in Douarnenez (Brittany) where she still lives, her unique and distinctive style places the human figure at the centre of her work. This lithograph was printed by Alexandra Duprez herself in collaboration with the Musée de l’Imprimerie de Nantes.

Like a gentle window into the play of emotions, Little Passing Thoughts is filled with drawings to meditate, escape, or simply smile.

Orfeo Tagiuri scribbles day and night on a small notebook. He tears away some of the drawings, to throw in the bin because they’re not good enough, to give away to friends — to have a laugh or to remember a moment — or to sell to a stranger who shared the exact same feeling or thought, for what Orfeo draws with a black pen are universal emotions. This pocket-sized book, compiling over 350 drawings, is meant to be carried everywhere and opened just when one needs to take a break, get inspired, and breathe.

“Each of these drawings is fished out from the river of little passing thoughts. I don’t know where they come from but sometimes I take the time to gently scoop them up and set them down. They are a great joy, relief and meditation to make. I hope you can feel that” — Orfeo Tagiuri

“Trois têtes” is a limited edition lithograph by Alexandra Duprez, the painter behind the cover of our book “Jeux de mains”. Born in Douarnenez (Brittany) where she still lives, her unique and distinctive style places the human figure at the centre of her work. This lithograph was printed by Alexandra Duprez herself in collaboration with the Musée de l’Imprimerie de Nantes.

Between collages and paper creations, the result of residencies and experiments, Do Insects Play? is a poetic exploration of materials that blends visual art and writing.

The Coup de Crayon collection offers the artists in the fields of painting, drawing or collage a “carte blanche” to imagine a series as a book. “Do Insects Play” is the third volume of the collection.

‘Do Insects Play?’ is an insight into French artist Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck’s playful and mindful practice, one that is frequently informed by the environment in which she finds herself. The artworks contained in this book are a curated selection of soft and vibrant collages from the ongoing series Cocooning  – composed of various found papers, paintings and textiles, along pieces from To End is to Start, a new body of works created out of repurposed cotton fibres and water. The pieces have all been produced during a 2018 – 19 residency in South India where Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck deepened her knowledge and practice of hand papermaking. A short story by the artist is presented alongside the artworks, appearing as a gentle melody dancing throughout the pages.

Nathalie du Pasquier’s objects become colourful and intriguing sculptures that break free from their functional reality.

The Coup de Crayon collection offers the artists in the fields of painting, drawing or collage a “carte blanche” to imagine a series as a book. “Andata Ritorno” is the second volume of the collection.

Nathalie Du Pasquier made the 50 drawings featured in Andata Ritorno in a short time-frame during summer 2018. This book is a captivating journey between reality and the imaginary as Du Pasquier presents everyday objects as transient sculptures next to intriguing geometric shapes that together create colourful and vibrant layouts.

Iris de Moüy’s lines create worlds where playfulness meets poetry. Animals and humans coexist in a dream world.

The Coup de Crayon collection offers the artists in the fields of painting, drawing or collage a “carte blanche” to imagine a series as a book. “Do Insects Play” is the first volume of the collection.

With her open and spontaneous line, Iris de Moüy draws emotion. In “Horses Are Blue” she creates a world filled with mysterious creatures and extraordinary people. These whimsical figures encounter, dare and embrace across the pages, inspiring a letting go.