The Energy of Nature in Sculpture and Printmaking
For German-born, Paris-based artist Tatjana Labossière, nature is a constant source of inspiration. Working across sculpture and printmaking, she explores the energy, movement and opposing forces that shape the natural world, transforming them into abstract forms that invite personal interpretation.
Growing up surrounded by art, first in her father’s painting studio and later in Nuremberg, a city closely associated with the engraver Albrecht Dürer, Labossière developed an early fascination with materials and making. Although she initially imagined becoming a painter, sculpture emerged as her most instinctive means of expression.
Her sculptural practice brings together steel, stone and occasionally other metals, often contrasting rigid architectural lines with sweeping curves and fractured forms. Alongside this physically demanding work, she has developed a distinctive approach to printmaking, creating unique impressions through a process that retains the textures and qualities of sculpture. Her work has also found its way into architectural spaces, including large-scale glass installations for Scotiabank in Canada.
In this interview, Labossière reflects on her childhood influences, her relationship with materials, the contrasts that drive her work and her continuing fascination with the extraordinary forces of nature.
Art was present very early in your life through your father’s painting studio in Germany. What do you remember most strongly about being around that environment as a child?
Painting was truly part of my life, watching my father and breathing in the smell of oil paint in the studio. I grew up in Nuremberg, the city of the engraver Albrecht Dürer, where engravings were everywhere. I was lucky: even as a child, I learned to work with sculpture, modelling and woodcarving.
Sculpture eventually became the dominant part of your practice. What was it about working in three dimensions that felt more natural to you than painting or drawing?
I thought I was a painter, but I like to say that it was sculpture that chose me. It has been the most natural form of expression for me since childhood. It is reality, in the way that an object one looks at is reality. Working in 2D is artificial.
Energy seems to be the central thread running through your work. When you begin a sculpture, are you thinking first about its physical form, or about the sense of movement and force you want it to carry?
In life, everything is energy. A work of art likewise has its own energy. It is born thanks to the energy the artist has devoted to creating it.
Yes, what matters to me first and foremost is the meaning and movement of a sculpture, what it has to express. When working in steel, it is important to make a model first to help with the shaping, but very often I let myself be carried away by the movement of the work as it comes into being and do not follow the initial form.
You often contrast the straight, architectural lines of steel or bronze with curves that suggest the vitality of nature. When did that tension between the man-made and the natural become so important to you?
La Dynamique des Contraires, or The Dynamics of Opposites, was one of my first solo exhibitions. Contrasts create a beautiful energy, like a spark.
I love observing nature, and I know human creations. That observation taught me that nature clearly favours supple forms, curves and circles, while humans love right angles.
Since then, I have played with that contrast. What is more, when I create sculptures with straight lines and right angles, I feel the need to make them burst apart, as if driven by a natural energy or impact.
Steel can feel industrial and uncompromising, yet many of your sculptures have a strong sense of movement and delicacy. Do you enjoy pushing the material away from what people expect it to be?
Yes, you are right. Steel is stiff and recalcitrant and can bring industry to mind. It is a battle to impose one’s will on it, or to create a curve.
I love the finished result of a work in steel and surprising people with the material. I also love, when it is a large piece, being able to say that I made it all with my own hands, from A to Z. That surprises people, coming from a woman.
Stone also appears alongside metal in a number of your works. What interests you about bringing together materials that carry such different histories and physical qualities?
I have always loved stones. For a few years, I also carved stone. Combining these two materials creates a contrast once again, an interesting energy.
Titles such as Equilibre, Liens, Lignes de vie and Fragments suggest relationships, movement and states of being rather than simply describing form. How important is naming a work to the way you understand it?
Titles are not all that important. I try not to give the viewer too many clues, even though I have my own idea. What counts is what the spectator sees and feels.
The name given to a work often steers the viewer too much towards a fixed idea, and as my work is quite abstract, one must leave the imagination free to see what it wishes to see.
For example, I carved a sculpture in stone. Some saw the blossoming of a flower in it, while the person who fell in love with it and bought it saw a mother with her child.
Printmaking came later in your practice, and you have described it as a moment of reflection and rest from the physical energy required by sculpture. Does working on a flat surface allow a completely different side of you to emerge?
When I learned classical engraving, I was not very satisfied with the result. Then I developed my own very personal technique, close to sculpture.
Instead of drawing into a copper plate, I sculpt cardboard to create forms. Drawing does not interest me much; I am after the sensation of volume and material. Then, once inked, these forms go under the printing press.
This work is peaceful and restful, like meditation, and above all, I rediscover the pleasure of colour: mixing, seeking the right tone and enjoying something I had missed in sculpture.
Your monotypes and prints are also strongly connected to nature, but through colour and gesture rather than physical mass. Do ideas ever move directly between your sculpture and printmaking?
Yes, with my monotype prints, which are always unique pieces, like my sculptures, nature inspires me. I seek to translate the soul of nature through form and colour.
There is often a link between my sculptures and my engravings. The common thread is the idea made visible through forms, and volume is present in the engravings too.
Some of your prints have been translated onto a much larger architectural scale, including works on glass for the headquarters of Scotiabank in Canada. What was it like seeing imagery that began as printmaking become part of a building?
I sometimes work with decorators, designers or architects. In this way, some of my prints have become walls in buildings, such as Scotiabank in Canada and projects in Ireland.
I have also worked with Vinci Immobilier, and one of my sculptures stands in a building’s lobby.
It is a pleasure to see my works living their new lives, and sometimes they impress me.
Your recent work includes Fragments 2025. Does the idea of fragmentation reflect something you are becoming increasingly interested in within your practice?
Fragments are an expression of the breaking of the established order, of impermanence.
A well-behaved square bursts apart under the impulse of an energy, the energy of nature, which is far stronger than anything humans can build.
This idea is not new to me. I admire the energy and the force of the elements and remain eternally astonished that humans can believe a wall, a dam or a dyke will stop or tame that force.
After working for so many years with ideas of nature, energy and material, what still feels unresolved enough to keep drawing you back into the studio?
Creativity is an endless journey. It is a permanent search, using different materials and combining unexpected forms or colours.
For example, I seek to unite my two disciplines by integrating prints into sculptures. At present, I have new ideas for working more with paper, and why not create paper sculptures? It will never be finished.
For more information, visit Tatjana’s website and Instagram
