In an exhibition space committed to contemporary sculpture and through the artworks of the Villa Datris Foundation, Toucher Terre brings together more than 50 ceramic artworks by French and international artists on the theme of Earth.
The discovery of the material plunges us into a primitive forest sheltering various animal and plant species—creatures inspired by nature, mythology and folktales.
From the bowels of the Earth as archaeological witness of our civilization, to the intimacy of the workshop where accident/control, chance/luck reign, ceramics reveals its strengths and weaknesses.
Ceramics is an ancestral, yet staunchly contemporary, art form that reinvigorates sculptural practice. Through unconventional combinations of materials, the appropriation of traditional techniques, and the misappropriation of utilitarian forms, the artists surprise us with an explosion of color and texture.
In the hands of artists, ceramics celebrates flora and fauna in all their power and majesty. As a homage to nature, clay transforms into creatures inspired by earthy origins that also allow us to glimpse a future in the making.
In many myths and legends, humans are beings made from clay. Creatures become creators, and artists, in their turn, shape clay to reinvent a world. They give birth to landscapes and characters inspired by our collective unconscious, our dreams, and our nightmares.
A site of artistic experimentation in three dimensions, ceramics is, more than any other medium, subject to chance. Redoubling their inventiveness, the artists play with the tensions and constraints of the medium, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses through the prism of human nature and resilience.
Ghostly fossils, precious waste, banal elements of construction made joyous: in clay, these objects are magnified, sublimated, and replicated. Appropriating the anthropological value of ceramics, its status as witness of ancient civilizations, the artists propose a futuristic vision of the vestiges of the present.
