{"id":2222537,"date":"2026-10-27T14:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T11:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2222537"},"modified":"2026-10-27T14:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T11:06:10","slug":"tatiana-trouves-art-is-all-about-getting-lost-and-found-and-lost-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2222537","title":{"rendered":"Tatiana Trouv\u00e9\u2019s Art Is All About Getting Lost and Found and Lost Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Portrait-by-Helene-Pambrun-2023-1.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\n\t\u201cI spend my time making maps,\u201d Tatiana Trouv\u00e9 told me as we ambled through her first exhibition with Brussels-based gallery Xavier Hufkens. Map-making is a rather curious obsession for Trouv\u00e9 to have, given how keenly she wants to experience the feeling of being lost and \u201cdisoriented,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n

\n\tContradictions like these are a hallmark across the artist\u2019s oeuvre. Objects aren\u2019t quite what they appear to be. Installations blur the line between archival documentation and fiction. But Trouv\u00e9, whose last name, incredibly, means \u201cfound\u201d in French, believes that \u201cbeing lost is a way of finding oneself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen you get lost somewhere, you start looking at things differently,\u201d she continued. \u201cYou begin rebuilding a path, not the way you already know, [but] something else that allows you to feel awakened in a different way, to navigate your way and become attuned to things you don\u2019t notice when you know exactly how to get from A to B.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTrouv\u00e9\u2019s Brussels exhibition begins in much the same way. On view through October 31, it features a mix of sculptures, drawings, and installations and spans all three of the gallery\u2019s floors. The first room is devoted to L\u2019inventario<\/em> (2025), an \u201cinventory\u201d of sorts that contains all her studio materials cast in metal and stone, arranged in neat rows by type and size, installed atop convincingly illusionistic cardboard shelves made of bronze. Here, you\u2019ll find dried flowers, used soaps, shoes, bags, foam padding, paint bottles, books, paper folders, scrunchies, lighters, flattened soda cans, seashells, pea pods\u2014the list goes on. While many of the items can be found in Trouv\u00e9\u2019s studio, many are actually imagined. The familiar begins to feel uncanny.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\"Sculptures<\/div>\n<\/div>
Tatiana Trouv\u00e9, Inventario<\/em>, 2025, installation view, at Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.<\/span>Photo THOMAS MERLE\/Courtesy the artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThat is also the case with a series of sculptures made with black cast iron and plaster that are \u201cdiagrams\u201d tracking noise pollution on the outskirts of Paris. Rendered abstract, these black forms curl down and reach into the air, seeming to defy what they purport to measure. They adhere to an entirely different set of impulses we need not fully understand.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Trouv\u00e9 works with diagrams, maps, or inventories, it is to distort them into new forms. Her breakthrough work Bureau d\u2019Activit\u00e9s Implicites<\/em>(Bureau of Implicit Activities)<\/em>, developed between 1997 and 2007, took the shape of a fictional office installation that displayed things like r\u00e9sum\u00e9s packed with experiences Trouv\u00e9 has never had, piles of job rejection letters, unrealized project proposals, and office supplies. Instead of being a workspace designed to meet production goals, Bureau<\/em> was a display of time spent thinking, both listless and constructive, rather than a final result.<\/p>\n

\n\tTrouv\u00e9 seems drawn to anything that implies a semblance of order and finding ways of shattering it along the way. That way of working is less obvious but just as essential in her drawings, which have a cosmological dimension to them. To begin her drawings, Trouv\u00e9 pours bleach onto blank sheets of industrial colored paper. As the bleach blooms across the surface, removing the dyes embedded in the pulp, she starts to \u201cbuild and find the drawing\u2019s path,\u201d developing them into floating, overlapping nebulae-like scenes, where natural and cosmic landscapes butt against architectural interiors and geometric planes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI like this process of being confronted with something I have absolutely no mastery over, where I have to show inventiveness and reflection, and let myself be completely guided by the things themselves,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen asked if it can be frightening to abandon so much control, Trouv\u00e9\u2019s face lit up with a wide, youthful smile. \u201cIt\u2019s always hard, but I think there would be no interest left for me at all if I had control over all of this,\u201d she said, adding that she doesn\u2019t work in editions for that reason. \u201cDoing the same sculpture twice is profoundly boring to me. \u2026 The only thing that interests me is what idea a sculpture has given me, what thoughts for the next one. In fact, my work is always about doors that must continuously open. It\u2019s a continuation of spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>
Tatiana Trouv\u00e9, Untitled<\/em>, from the series \u201cLes dessouvenus\u201d [The unremembered], 2024.<\/span>Photo THOMAS MERLE\/Courtesy the artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tWhile growing up in Senegal, where her family moved in 1976 from Italy, Trouv\u00e9 began making art and was influenced by the folkloric tradition of djinns, invisible spirits who live in gardens. \u201cI started imagining that perhaps we, not they, were the ghosts,\u201d she has said in a 2005 interview.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis magical thinking has extended into her current practice, which can feel both haunted by invisible bodies and animated by our own living and breathing ones. Have we, then, become the ghostly spirits, as Trouv\u00e9 once imagined? Her Sitting Sculptures<\/em> (2024\u2013), for instance, are meant to be sat upon, as the title suggests, as a way to complete them. They are made of stone elements combined with bronze casts of foam padding and mattresses, materials that support Trouv\u00e9\u2019s other sculptures but are often disregarded or rendered \u201cinvisible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThey no longer support the sculpture, but they support you,\u201d she said of the Sitting Sculptures<\/em>, while we took a break on one of them. \u201cThere are no human figures, but the human is ever-present in my work, through its absence,\u201d Trouv\u00e9 said.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>
Tatiana Trouv\u00e9, Sitting Sculpture<\/em>, 2026, installation view, at Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.<\/span>Photo THOMAS MERLE\/Courtesy the artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tAnother example of this is in her well-known \u201cGuardian\u201d series (2013\u2013) of cast stone and bronze sculptures of security-guard chairs. Partly inspired by her time working as a museum security guard, they are often accompanied by water bottles, cushions, books, or other belongings that give a sense of the presence of the person who sits there. The guard, however, is absent.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Trouv\u00e9\u2019s telling, her sculptures are also imbued with their own feelings and even expectations. One floor up, as we inspect a small part of L\u2019inventario <\/em>(2025), she pointed to an arrangement of dirtied, Morandi-like plastic bottles, behind which hang used brushes, dirtied paint pallets and squeezed-out tubes of oil paint. \u201cThis is like a little sculpture that dreams of being a painting,\u201d she said. \u201cI think objects have a life of their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tElsewhere, a 2026 untitled sculpture\u2014made of patinated steel, painted aluminum, marble, onyx, and bronze and resembling a coat rack with hangers\u2014certainly seems to have spent some time frolicking in Hufkens\u2019s Brussels gallery. On the floor, twirling strokes and marks appear to have been made on the ground using the metallic feet of the bronze coat rack, as if it has danced its way to its current location, leaving behind traces of its steps. Beside it is a bucket of paint surrounded by more floor markings leading mysteriously to a pair of black shoes coming out of or going into the wall.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThrough her movement, in a sense, she is drawing,\u201d Trouv\u00e9 said of the coat rack. Like a moving body, the installation \u201calso recalls a person who is not there, these figures without bodies. \u2026 It is also somewhat like ghosts passing through my work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\"A<\/div>\n<\/div>
Tatiana Trouv\u00e9, Untitled<\/em>, 2026, installation view, 2026, at Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.<\/span>Photo THOMAS MERLE\/Courtesy the artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/artists\/tatiana-trouve-xavier-hufkens-exhibition-brussels-1234803938\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Portrait-by-Helene-Pambrun-2023-1.jpg?w=1024″] \u201cI spend my time making maps,\u201d Tatiana Trouv\u00e9 told me as we ambled through her first exhibition with Brussels-based gallery Xavier Hufkens. Map-making is a rather curious obsession for Trouv\u00e9 to have, given how keenly she wants to experience the feeling of being lost and \u201cdisoriented,\u201d she explained. Contradictions like these are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2222537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2222537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2222537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2222537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2222537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2222537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2222537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}