“Pottery,
at least as far as its purely physical composition is concerned, is
of the stuff of many of the West’s religious and cultural founding
myths. For thousands of years, intelligence and beauty have found
form and taken shape in this melding together of earth and fire.
After all, in the book of Genesis, isn’t it earth that constitutes
the source code for the entire human race? Wasn’t it on the sixth
day of Creation that God gathered up the dust in His hand and made
man after His own image?
When
we turn to the world of poetry and literature, it is of course
Prometheus who is seen as the originator of the art of pottery. In
order to give form to clay, you may not have to be a Titan, but you
certainly need something of the Seer.
Those who stick with it turn
into, in Rimbaud’s words, a thief of fire. What’s more,
Prometheus, (whose name means Foresight), created mankind from bits
of mud that he turned into rock, before nabbing knowledge and
learning from the great ones of Olympia. So, we’re all just fire
and dust. Artists who master these elements are equally dedicated
to
contributing to the work in progress that is humanity. They task
themselves with the job of bringing into the world forms and concepts
that were hitherto lacking. The first fire-based art form, indeed,
perhaps the first art form full stop, is the process by which
creation gives ever-growing life to creation.
This
is how we can best understand Tout feu Tout flamme - art that is
about the very spirit of exhilaration that has its being in art
itself, with artistic convention being smoked out and destroyed, no
matter where it tries to hide. First into the flames are desires,
wings and eyes. Here, raw art is a dish best eaten cooked. Hereby,
the young artists, who as makers of ceramics share a common bond,
take their place in a pseudo-mythological story, each having their
own reasons for doing so. Their ceramic artworks, regardless of their
exact composition, have seemingly just emerged from the primeval
earth. The very fact of bringing them into the open, into the light,
might seem enough to seal their fate – to be turned into museum
pieces - at least as a protection against their supposed fragility.
This, however, is where we would be wrong: to choose pottery is to
accept the scorched earth school of art, to agree to a degree of
violence or force in the midst of finesse.” Alexis Jakubowicz
Lefebvre
& Fils Gallery is pleased to present Tout
feu Tout flamme,
an unseen group show of eleven international artists around ceramic
works.
Florian
Bézu,
Ryan Blackwell,
Robin Cameron,
Patricia Camet,
Dewar
& Gicquel,
Mimosa Echard,
David Gallagher,
Chloé Jarry,
Morgane Tschiember and
Kostis Velonis,
gathered by the curator Alexis Jakubowicz, prove ceramic’s
relevance and persistence in contemporary art
March
19-May 31, 2014
