Claire Lindner: Landscape within at Espace Grandjean – École d’Art Céramique, Vallauris

Claire Lindner: Landscape within is on view at Espace Grandjean – École d’Art Céramique, Vallauris

July 2 – October 2, 2021

How to translate the movements of air, the fluidity of water, the breath of the wind or the turbulence of desire? This notion of flow, physical or psychic, guides my evolution in shaping each of my pieces.

A universe where everything is mixed: interior, exterior, liquid, solid, air, mineral, animal, vegetable and human… as if everything were made of the same substance.

Claire Lindner, 2018

In 2019, the City of Vallauris Golfe-Juan and the School invited the ceramic artist Claire Lindner for a collaboration: a residency at the School, master classes, meetings and a presentation of the works produced during her residency in Vallauris, in the exhibition area of the School, accompanied by the publication of a catalogue.

The invitation is an opportunity for the School’s public audiences to discover the artist and her work, to follow her research, and for the artist to work outside her studio, in a different context conducive to the development of new approaches. In Vallauris, using elements from the local heritage, Claire Lindner was able to extend her thoughts into a new series of creations.

The Residency in Vallauris

Since 2018 Claire Lindner has been developing a series entitled ‘Air is a Root’. When she began her residency in Vallauris, she wanted to think about the production of works that would be linked to the town of Vallauris. The idea of working with elements linked to the history of Vallauris ceramics was obvious to me.

Her attention was quickly drawn to plaster moulds, originally used for casting leaf-shaped dishes. These moulds produced in post-war Vallauris are part of a collection that the School is progressively building up for memorial and educational purposes. From these moulds, Claire Lindner creates leaves by stamping, which she assembles into bushes. This is the main series produced in Vallauris. In addition to
being attracted by the beauty and elegance of this form, the leaf generated in me a whole imaginary world to which I undertook to give substance. One of the main threads running through all my work is the expression of life. What makes a form alive? My sculptures are a perpetual quest for an answer to this question. The leaf is not only the very representation of the plant and therefore of life, but also a dreamlike symbol linking us to the moving landscapes of our psyche and our emotions. At the same time, in a certain continuity with ‘Air is a root’, she is developing an imposing mural composed of falling elements, flowing towards the ground: The fall.

Claire Lindner is also experimenting with a machine from the School: a spinning machine, which extrudes fine clay balls and is traditionally used to produce handles (utilitarian ceramics) and ‘braids’, a technique that makes it possible to create ceramic pieces reminiscent of basketry. Between two stays in Vallauris, Claire resumed her experiments, which resulted in the Overflow and Blossoming series.

The Exhibition

Wind, moving leaves, a rush of hormones, a surge of desire, a fire, a descent of organs, a lava flow, a sea cucumber… A Rorschach test for a journey to the narrow borders of life, energy and matter. ‘Landscape within’ immerses us in an unreal and yet familiar landscape. An X-ray landscape of those physical and psychic flows evoked by Claire Lindner. A postcard of our world, of the pragmatic forces that drive it, and at the same time an intimate journey that takes us back to the emotions and impulses that pull the threads of our behaviour. A journey to the heart of these irrepressible forces of life that tirelessly build our inner and outer worlds.

In the EACV School’s exhibition hall, located in the old Grandjean-Jourdan pottery factory, 20 pieces will be presented, half of which were made in Vallauris and are therefore new. In the factory’s old wood-fired kiln, Claire Lindner will design an ephemeral work in raw clay, in the continuity of the creations already made at the Château de Saint Fargeau in 2018 and at the International Ceramics Biennial in Korea in 2020.

The City of Vallauris Golfe-Juan published a catalogue of the exhibition. The book presents the exhibited works photographed by Anthony Girardi as well as texts by Kimberley Harthoorn and Ruth Scheps.

Contact
+33 (0)4 93 63 07 61
eacv@vallauris.fr

Ecole d’art céramique de Vallauris – Espace Grandjean
Avenue du stade
06220 Vallauris
France