2 Septembre – 17 October

Presentation of the exhibitions
Sunday 21 October at 3.30 pm

Private viewing
Saturday 22 October at 6 pm

Discovery tours
Sundays 29 october and 12 novembre, 11.30 am to 12.30 pm

Suzanne Daigeler, ceramistof the Ceramics Association of La Borne, will be on hand to guide you through the exhibitions –
an opportunity not to be missed for outreach and the sharing of ideas.
Conditions: standard exhibition admission fee apples.

Open every day from 11 am to 6 pm

Raphaël Meyer

Hors piste

The artist lives and works in Charente.

I grew up with the smells of wood, the scent of the workshop and the fumes of firing.
Discovering Japanese ceramics (Bizen, Shigaraki and Iga) resonated clearly and deeply with my sensibility, then contemporary North American ceramics revolutionised my approach to clay.
Going beyond the limits of the material, following my instinct, capturing the moment, allowing to emerge what has to be.
I attach great importance to preparing the clay, creating the ideal ‘parchment’ for the unique calligraphy of ash and fire, resulting in deeply expressive surfaces.
Every year, a ritualised process is re-enacted leading up to the eight-day wood firing, the work of the fire that will lift the veil of doubt.
The pots have their own personality. Their characters emerge through their proportions, their scars, their overall shape; they have an active presence and can look different every time they are encountered.
An expressionistic approach creates power, a directional movement that provides a whole world of information to the beholder.

The state of creativity is a wild entity that needs to be endlessly tamed.

Raphaël Meyer

Martin Lartigue

Qui l’eût cru

I like the expression “raw art”, because in French “raw” is the word “cru”, as in “who would have thought it”, the year’s vintage, the “cru” in the word cruel as in cruel childhood, the childhood of art, with hands in raw clay. A raw clay figure retains its wet reflection, more beautiful than it is when dry and oilier than when it is fired; when you fire it, you have to give it back this energy. You have to make it turn pink and then red, you have to find everything you can to revive it. I never know how I’m going to approach it, I have to learn everything all over again. When I was 17, I used to do something else, I was an actor but I needed to open another door. One day I opened the door of a pottery workshop near Montparnasse in Paris. They only made crockery there and that’s what I liked, like the crockery of Brittany, Spain or what is found in the French countryside, but I wanted to do it the Greek way; I retained this spirit of mixing, mixing oxides on or under glazes, mixing cultures and my own culture. For that, it comes from being alone, because when you are alone, you are everyone.

I tell myself a folk story, a mythology full of lies, and it seems that the lies are always truer, where possible, to find yourself as a primitive or to find another way of being primitive. Ultimately it doesn’t matter, except for the piece that now exists on its own and for the precious time it took to make it.