Laurent Petit

Ceramic Sculptures

12 September – 5 November 2015

Laurent Petit - Sculpture céramique - céramique contemporaine

Laurent Petit. Arbologie. 2012 – 56 x 58 x 19 cm Vue avant. Photo Pascal Vangysel

The Galerie de l’Ancienne Poste especially dedicated to contemporary ceramics is delighted to present the first solo exhibition of the sculptor ceramist Laurent Petit. A selection of 15 or so pieces, some unprecedented and created especially for the exhibition, illustrates the development of the artist over the last few years.  

The work of Laurent Petit is obvious and disturbing. Obvious in what it offers us to look at : a work both sculptural and pictorial in which the ceramist imposes his artistic style without rejecting the pottery tradition which has guided him towards his own language. Disturbing in what it asks us to understand. The forms are manifestly inspired by trees – But so knowing. Concave barks and branches poised in wonders of equilibrium. Stumps and trunks of wood having the appearance of minerals. Spells cast by Nature? The magic of ceramics? The prowess of the artist? Nature entrapped in refinement. Laurent Petit applies the blues, pinks, whites and very pale greens – evocative of a dawn sky or the setting sun – as an artist paints his canvas or as a composer notes a stave on his score. The titles also play their own music, melodic or resounding –“Arbologie”, “Tronquine”, “Arcalienne”, “ Tégule”, “Barcalogie” or “Opertine”. The charm works.
Axelle Corty
Journalist & Art Critic.
Extract from the catalogue of the exhibition

Laurent Petit was born in Bourges (Cher) in 1962. Trained at the School of Decorative Arts in Paris, he was an industrial designer from 1989 to 1994. Laurent Petit first encountered clay during a course on Raku in 1992. This revelation led him to take a course given by the Maison de la Ceramique at Mulhouse, he then furthered his own research for four more years before starting to exhibit in 2001. His work was noticed very quickly and was presented at the International Biennale of Ceramics at Châteauroux in 2003, and then selected at “The Parcours Céramique Carougeois”, in Switzerland, and more recently in the context of the 2013 edition of the International Triennale of Ceramic and Glass in Mons, Belgium

A selection of Laurent Petit’s works