Johan Creten has a masochistic streak. In the 1980s, when ceramics were looked down on by the art world elite, the Belgian-born, Paris-based non-conformist gravitated to the unpopular ceramics atelier of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent to turn damp and lowly clay into poetic, haunting and mysterious art imbued with a socio-political dimension. Nobody wished to exhibit his work back then, but he remained undeterred and was among the first to eliminate the boundaries between sculpture and ceramics, paving the way for a new generation of young artists to use clay in contemporary art.
Asked why he hasn’t tired of the medium four decades later, Creten replies, “I must like to suffer.” Ceramic art is a lengthy, arduous process when you consider the time required between conception and final creation incorporating countless stages: modeling, drying, firing, glazing and retaining the emotion and concentration over that long a period. “Working with clay is feeling in contact with something primal, primitive and ancient,” he discloses. “I like its wetness and dirtiness.”
Continuing to get his hands dirty, the artist, celebrated for his repertoire of tortuous and powerful forms that are at once seductive and repulsive, brings together 40 years of expertise – from the ceramics he pioneered in contemporary sculpture in the early 1980s to the bronze he began using in the 2000s – in his two-part exhibition, “Playing with Fire”, taking place in Orléans in central France. Taking over the streets of the city that Joan of Arc famously saved from English siege in 1429, Creten plunges visitors into his universe through 11 monumental bronze sculptures occupying the public space, including squares, courtyards, parks and in front of the majestic cathedral, thereby making art accessible to all.
Alongside crowd favorites, such as “The Bat” or “The Great Vivisector” that you can climb or sit on, the exhibition unveils previously unseen sculptures especially created for the show, such as “The Grasshopper” or “The Dead Fly”. Creten’s interpretation of animals is always open. “You’ve got to feel them more than understand them as an analysis of a theme,” he says. “You’ve got to let the emotions come over you when you look at them. You could almost say that they are different visions of human existence. It’s never about the animal, but about what the animal says about humans, where the animal is in fact a representation of human behavior.”
Over at the Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans, viewers are offered a behind-the-scenes look into Creten’s creative process for the first time, echoing his sculptures on display in the city, through never-before-seen drawings and preparatory studies. Opening up his precious sketchbooks to reveal the source of his creations, drawing has long been the intimate, cathartic and hidden part of his practice, in which his vulnerabilities appear, but which forms an integral step of his process. His extensive research on paper has sometimes preceded the production of his most famous works by several decades. It is accompanied by objects, models and studies in ceramic and bronze that unveil the deep roots of his sculptures, shining the spotlight on a rare visual record of his artistic development that has received little attention in his previous exhibitions.
This captivating immersion offers a deep dive into Creten’s work, giving full access to years of inspiration behind his emblematic and new pieces. A number of ceramic pieces such as “Odore di Femmina”, “Les Femmes Sans Ombres” and “The Cocks” completes this exploration, examining themes like physical and social violence, intolerance and racism, and are placed in dialogue with the museum’s collections. As the exhibition’s title indicates, Creten’s artistic process always involves fire: the fire of ceramics and bronze, the fire of life and the sensitive themes he references in his work. Discover “Playing with Fire” now in the streets of Orléans until summer 2025 and at the Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans until September 22, 2024.