Emprise is pleased to announce ‘Icebergs’, Jean Feline’s first solo exhibition in Marseille. The show is divided into 3 parts that work through the codes of lived experience, parenting and art praxis. In psychoanalysis, the iceberg metaphorically represents the three levels of the mind: the conscious, the preconscious and the unconscious. Through the prism of fatherhood, the exhibition invites us to revisit these environments, both physically and psychologically.

Jean’s openness to materials, dissolves the boundaries between mediums — in this show he continues to foreground the importance of drawing to his practice. His drawings are realised with multiple methods of mark making, including; carbon tracing, loose watercolours, freehand pen lines and ink . Recurring forms include: landscapes, fruit, domestic spaces and brick walls. Aside from their titles, very little context is inserted into the works on paper in order to leave ample space for interpretation.

In a series of new sculptures, domestic elements act as metaphors for psychological spaces. The materials that find their way to Jean tend to be objects or part-objects at the end of their lifespan of usefulness. Functionally spent, they evoke a variety of fragile states – physical, emotional, subconscious. Yet, in their brute materiality, they remain playfully present, orbiting the outer stretches of everyday life. Picking up commonplace miscellanea, the sculptures work from within it; from within the quite literal messiness of a child-rearing home, the almost inevitable circumstance of early parenthood.