Art professor Andrea Eis to showcase work at Parisian gallery

By Katie Land, news editor

The City of Light is the next stop for Oakland University’s Andrea Eis, associate professor of art and art history and outgoing chair of the Department of Art and Art History. This August, Eis will debut a solo exhibition at the Grace Teshima Gallery in Paris.

“The exhibition is very exciting, though I don’t think it will feel real until I’m in Paris,” Eis said. “As a professor, I work to balance my creative and scholarly activity with my teaching. It is very important to me to continue producing my own work, to continue working on this aspect of who I am.”

Eis’ photography exhibit, entitled “Silent Conversations,” will have pieces from three different collections on display, as well as new work created especially for the show. The three series, Marginalia, Poets, and Nostos (Homecoming), all seek to combine beautiful images with intellectual and literary ideas. 

The gallery, also known as “Chez Grace,” is located in the historically artistic neighborhood of Montmarte and is owned and operated by American Grace Teshima. 

Teshima seeks to provide gallery space for a high volume of contemporary artists, preferring to host many different exhibitions that run for only several weeks each. The gallery and exhibitions are run out of Teshima’s home, which was featured in a 2010 New York Times travel article about the underground art and cuisine scene in Paris. 

Long fascinated by ancient Greek history and culture, many of Eis’ photographs are images that combine a reinterpretation of classical Greek sculptures and elements of literature she finds intriguing. Many are printed on fabric, and hung so that light is allowed to filter through. 

In the Marginalia series, the texts used are handwritten notations left in a series of Greek books by an American woman in the 1900s, which Eis uncovered in a library in Athens. With Poets, Eis’ explores lines of poetry or literature from writers such as Emily Dickinson and D.H. Lawrence. The Nostos (Homecoming) series is focused on phrases from Homer’s “The Odyssey,” and Aeschylus’ “Agamemnon.”

“I feel it is important to show new work, so I will include 8-10 pieces that have not previously been shown before,” Eis said. “Having a solo exhibition to prepare for is inspiring for my creative process.”

The trip will run from Aug. 2-14, with Eis arriving to set up and prepare for her show’s opening on Monday, Aug. 6. At the gallery, Eis will give an artist’s talk and appear at the avant premiere to discuss her work. 

Since beginning to display her photographs in 1978, Eis has participated in well over a hundred exhibitions, including several solo shows, and international exhibitions in Greece and Hungary. This exhibition in Paris marks a departure, however, as Eis has never been to the gallery space before, and will be making all new connections.

For more information about Eis’ “Silent Conversations” exhibit in Paris, view the announcement.