Project Type: 2024

ABOUT ABSOLU.

Exhibition | Curated by Stéphanie Le Follic-Hadida

READ THE PRESS RELEASE

13 international artists :

*Will be present during press day on June 20th.

Paula BASTIAANSEN Basque Country

Jean GIREL France

Christian GONZENBACH Swiss

Yasuo HAYASHI Japan

Steven HEINEMANN Canada

Valérie HERMANS France

Jun KANEKO Japan

Toshio MATSUI Japan

Maria ORIZA Spain

Peter PINCUS USA

David REGAN USA

Yū TANAKA Japon

Asuka TSUBOI Japan

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Absolu. is an exhibition of contemporary sculptural ceramics, the vast majority being non-figurative. It presents 13 extraordinary international artists, “big names”, who have such an intimate knowledge of the material and such stubbornness that they constantly overcome the pre-supposed limits of the material for the benefit of a free, personal and creative creation, terribly demanding.

Some works are hushed and haloed with mystery. Works like territories, giving themselves to us without puffery or bluster—pure, absolute—emerging from a constantly exploring mind and a gesture to quote the famous American ceramicist Peter Voulkos: “where the risk is great but, spiritually, worth taking.” From the antipodes of the accident or stroke of luck come works like islands of the spectacular. Works that live, far more than by masterful technique, by the poetry inhabiting them and the meditation they inspire. Works that bear within themselves a perseverance in seeking, a form of sublime insistence.

All the exhibited works in the Absolu exhibition chosen by Stéphanie Le Follic-Hadida reflect a fiercely personal praxis and style. Unfitted to fashion and facile appeal, they bear the weight of a ceramic truth. These are works among works, esthetic milestones forever imprinted in our memory, conveying a gentle madness, irrational and magical.

When one toys so with unpredictability, when artists go where they will with such apparent ease, piercing the opacity of formulae and rules to reinvent at their fingertips concept, enamel, form—what can one say? What can one say of those artists, if not that through their intimate knowledge of the ceramic medium they lead us, with a gracious but compelling hand, to archipelagos on the edge of dream and the frontier of rare lands.

INSTALLATION PHOTOS

FEATURED ARTWORK

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• View More by Peter Pincus HERE
  
• Inquire HERE

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b. 1982 Rochester, NY,
lives and works in Penfield, NY

Peter Pincus is well known for work that combines exquisite form and intense color through porcelain vessels and tile compositions. Driven by inquiry, his practice blends color theory, the history of decorative arts and cutting-edge technical experimentation in ceramics. As an artist and designer, Pincus continues to garner national attention for his research-based practice that includes the Wedgwood collection at the Birmingham Museum of Art (AL) and, most recently, an examination of several conceptual works by Sol LeWitt at MASS MoCA (North Adams, MA).

Represented by Ferrin Contemporary since 2015, Pincus has participated in multiple exhibitions, including Glazed & Diffused (2015), Revive, Remix, Respond (2018), and two solo exhibitions, PETER PINCUS: Channeling Josiah Wedgwood (2018) and ART IN THE AGE OF INFLUENCE: Peter Pincus | Sol LeWitt (2020). Pincus has exhibited widely at galleries, art fairs and museums throughout the US. His work can be found in numerous private and public collections including the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art (Sedalia, MO), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, TX), ASU Art Museum Ceramics Research Center (Tempe, AZ), Schien-Joseph International Museum (Alfred, NY) and The Arkansas Arts Center (Little Rock, AR). Pincus is the recipient of the Lewis Comfort Tiffany Award in 2017.

MORE ON LA FONDATION L’ENTERPRISE BERNARDAUD

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The Fondation d’Entreprise Bernardaud was established in 2002 in Limoges by Michel Bernardaud, chairman and CEO of the eponymous company. It is directed by Hélène Huret. From the beginning, it has worked to endow the Limoges manufactory with a cultural dimension.

A visitor circuit has been set up to explain the history and manufacture of porcelain. In addition, the Foundation holds a themed exhibition every summer to present a broad range of contemporary ceramic works by international artists seldom shown in France. This demonstrates the great vitality of ceramics on the international art scene, especially porcelain, one of today’s most interesting artistic media.

ABOUT THE THEMED EXHIBITION

Since 2003, the Fondation Bernardaud has presented a large annual exhibition, applying standards as high as those imposed at the factory. This event has become a highlight that no connoisseur of the ceramic arts would want to miss. Its scope is particularly broad, because the term ‘‘ceramics’’ (from the Greek keramos) designates any earthenware object that has undergone firing. Traditional ceramics falls into four categories : pottery (or fired clay), earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. The purpose is to show visitors a few of the rich and varied ways of using this material from all over the world. From the beginning, the Fondation Bernardaud has made a point of presenting any given artist no more than once in a ten-year period and exclusively featuring works that have not been shown before in France. By spotlighting French or international artists that have had few occasions to display their works in France and are therefore not well known here, the Fondation celebrates the vital role on the international art scene played by ceramics, especially porcelain, one of the most interesting and promising media to be found today.

Some of the exhibitions held in Limoges subsequently travel to major museums in France and abroad (e.g. Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris ; The Museum of Art and Design, New York City ; The Gardiner Museum, Toronto ; The New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taipei ; The CODA museum, Appeldorn, The Netherlands ; and The World Jewelry Museum, Seoul).