For its 12th exhibition in 2022, the Villa Datris Foundation continues to explore the ancestral knowledge revisited by contemporary creation, with Toucher Terre, l’Art de la sculpture céramique echoing the Tissage Tressage exhibition in 2018.

Working with clay is in essence the art that came from Mother Earth, an original art that reconnects to the heart of nature’s energies.

In its most elaborate forms, it proceeds from the interaction of the four elements: earth, water, fire and air.

More than any other form of creation, the work of clay is body to body with man, tactile contact and imprint-witness of the artist’s hand. It is generated with sensuality, it is an art that takes flesh, and unfolds in a plasticity almost without limits. This art is indeed “plastic” in the etymological sense of the term: “suitable for modeling”, which invites to “shape, model”.

Raw clay, terra cotta, ceramic or fine porcelain, slip, glaze, enamel or varnish, raku, the facets of this art of clay and fire are innumerable, the fruit of techniques that are both timeless and mysterious, where the metals bring their chromatic notes with the metamorphosis of the high degree firing.

The result is smooth or rough, suave or saucy, with its shine, its matte, iridescent effects, its full and untied, which challenge the eye, inciting the touch. For the artist, the alchemy of fire is unexpected, a game of art and chance.

Always unique and yet profoundly universal, the work of clay and ceramics has been found since the dawn of time, in the four corners of the world, with exceptional diversity and limitless inventiveness.

Since its origins, this art form has been used in everyday life, domestically and functionally, as a humble and unpretentious form of creation, yet one that is a companion to everyday gestures.

It was the subject of a true rediscovery with the Arts & Craft movement and then the Bauhaus in the twentieth century, which took the measure of the powerful modernity of this medium, with the desire to transfigure everyday objects, which became works of art in themselves.

Symbol of the return to the original earth, the work of clay and ceramics draws from the very the essence of Nature, in an osmosis with its deep energies through the creative gesture of the artist.

A place of experimentation, imagination and limitless fantasy, where constructed and structured approaches like architectures – like some elaborate houses made of clay – and baroque and colorful, experimental and unpredictable creations can be mixed. We rediscover art in its purest form.

More current than ever, these immemorial techniques open a new space of creativity for contemporary artists, who draw from their unheard-of strength a profound telluric energy and a wonderful source of inspiration for our time.

Ceramic art has returned to the forefront of the contemporary scene for its relevance to the ecological and identity crises of our world.

This is what the Villa Datris Foundation wishes to transmit to its public, while celebrating the joy of the simple gesture and the flamboyance of the skills of the artists presented.