Exposition "Sculptures Sigillées"

With: BABINET Léna, BURAUD Philippe, DALLOUN, DEFER Maxime, FIROBEN Lauriane, GALLAND Felix, VOISIN Marion, MOLET Miguel. Curators: Manon Berthelot, Chloé Courbet.

These enthusiasts of clay varnishes collected during harvests question ceramic art through a sensitive and almost geological approach, mixing traditional know-how and varied encounters to establish links between the earth and other materials.
An alchemy between color and form highlights their personal expression through a wide range of sculptures, from geometric to architectural, organic and primitive. These terra sigillata glazes, as supports for evocation and artistic expression, enrich the ceramic palette with a multitude of natural, soft and polished hues, which can be interpreted in various ways and reveal contemporary sensibilities.
Léna Babinet, like a naturalist in search of poetry and intimate stories, meticulously collects and classifies samples of shades, while exploring the inherited history through works such as “Anamnesis”, “Tinctura” or “Présages”.
The sculptures presented reveal a great technicality in their lines of tension, creating a visual rhythm that is both colorful and formal. The demand for the plasticity of clay is confronted with the knowledge of other materials, as shown by Marion Voisin in “Faille” and her openwork sculptures, which explore the tension between clay and metal.
Philippe Buraud, like an observer of cosmic depths, invites us to travel through infinity and its blue mysteries, illuminated by rare colors and minerals.
The organic and rounded universe of Lauriane Firoben's sculptures offers us landscape nuances, ranging from solar to lunar, thanks to wood firing and smoking.
Some works question the philosophical concepts of emptiness and fullness, as well as content and container, while questioning the status of contemporary ceramics and their capacity to evoke a sensitive world, both dreamlike and committed.
Miguel Molet questions usage and architecture through his series of diverted containers “Cabacera de linea”, where the shape of the container explores imaginary distortions.
Felix Galland, with his cylindrical and textured “Tubes”, transports us into dreamlike universes where geometric tension and the softness of the sigillata blend.
Dalloun, for his part, explores round and archaic sculptural forms, inspired by primitive influences, through his "Tripod Stones", whose sigillata texture evokes a thick silk veil or old tanned leather. Maxime Defer reveals refined forms in a thousand colors, with round or taut lines, shaped by wood fire and sometimes tinged with a mysterious blue.
All these ceramicists use vitrified and sometimes smoked decorations, acting as a mirror revealing the traces and marks of the passing of time, as well as geological movements, strata and folds of life, which the creamy sigillata softens thanks to careful decantation.
A look between tradition and modernity is thus woven, respecting know-how and our environment. We invite the Archeosite of Montans, specialist in Gallo-Roman “Terres Sigillées”, to present some jewels from this period.