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Sylvie Auvray, Michele Ciacciofera, Eric Croes, Cyril Debon, Simone Fattal, Grant Levy-Lucero, Lucile Littot, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Mai-thu Perret, Natsuko Uchino
June 2022
Ceramics build a bridge between art and agriculture. One of humanity’s oldest form of art, ceramic amphorae embody the fundamental and necessary dialogue of 91.530 Le Marais, a place of transdisciplinary agro-artistic research. With its numerous quarries, the earth of the Marsh is composed of a very rich mineral clay, associated with sandy elements, coming from the
decomposition of rocks.
91.530 Le Marais invites ten ceramists to imagine a series of large, unique vessels. Varying in form, these amphorae interact—or not—with their contents, a cold-pressed liquid from the hemp plant sown on the surrounding farmlands, scented with bamboo by the perfume expert Yann Vasnier. Exhibited in the historic barns of the Marais, they stand where wheat was once stored for the community : witnesses, in turn, of the birth and disappearance of an agrarian society.
From ancient pottery to today, ceramic practices have long united art and agricultural utility, being both containers and supports of the mythology of the civilization that creates them.
The amphora, from daily human object to witness of the history of art through the ages, embodies this reflection on the container as object-work. Since the 4th millennium B.C., the Greek-Roman terracotta amphora has been the primary container for the two products of agriculture that are the basis of society : oil and wine. The amphora bearing today the hemp liquids becomes a variation of this millenary object, studying its form and function of today.
The earth of the Marais, characterized by its clay minerality, carries this geographical memory. Its strata and layers bear witness to past times. These ceramics celebrate soil, and what it offers to the beings that become creators to its touch. “When one touches the earth, one touches the night of times”.
Amphoreus II at Asia Now, Monnaie de Paris
Lei Saito, Sylvie Auvray, Michele Ciacciofera, Simone Fattal, Grant Levy-Lucero, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Mai-Thu Perret, Natsuko Uchino
October 2022
Amphoreus was exhibited for the contemporary art fair Asia Now 2022. A new dialogue is being established between the ceramics and their environment at La Monnaie de Paris : The
neoclassical architecture of La Monnaie offers a particularly interesting space to engage in new dialogues between art and its environment. Indeed, Amphoreus’ works were exhibited
in the peristyle of this historical museum, an architectural element used in the divine temples of the Greeks, then used by the Romans and adapted to official buildings and even to
private architectures. Boundaries blur between the sacred and the profane, offering a new definition of the amphora : support of an iconography of the sacred, and container of harvest and mythologies.
