Shaped since the dawn of time, witness to past civilizations, the earth modeled by ceramist Blandine Chabani links it to Antiquity. From this mystical connection are born fascinating pieces, like ritual offerings celebrating the life and memory of deceased beings, exhibited this Thursday, November 28, 2024 from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Espace Temple gallery.
At the Espace Temple gallery, Blandine Chabani exhibits her ceramics
The birth of ceramics is dated to the Neolithic era. Since prehistory, terracotta objects have accompanied the adventure of humanity and the development of its different cultures, without ever disappearing and perpetually renewing themselves. When Blandine Chabani tried her hand at the art of ceramics, she instinctively followed this thread stretched through the ages to strongly connect with ancient times. “Ceramics have the power to immediately take me back to ancient timesshe explains. So I quickly became interested in the shapes of amphorae.”
In 2023, the ceramist invited us to her exhibition entitled “Mirage au patio”. In plays of light and mirrors, his pieces with pure, monochromatic and black shapes borrowed tones and themes from surrealism. The patio, an interior courtyard typical of Spanish houses, which she experienced during trips to Morocco or Andalusia, remains a starting point for her work. In this place where the voices of storytellers ricochet off the enamelled terracotta and fill the atmosphere with immemorial stories, we find ourselves around feasts.
Works between pure forms and surrealist inspirations
“Ceramics is linked to these moments of sharing: archaeologists trace the uses of vanished civilizations using plates and cups. But these objects also take on a cultic function when they collect the offerings surrounding a tomb in a sanctuary. I express myself mainly through the color black, so much so that when I wanted to work around the theme of the banquet, I spontaneously imagined a funeral banquet.“The war that has been raging for more than a year in the Middle East, and its macabre daily count of victims, then influenced his practice, making the relationship between ceramics and his own body more significant. “I started sculpting only by hand, and I radicalized this approach by no longer using any tools, so that my pieces strongly bear the imprint of my body.”
It is also by diverting uses that Blandine Chabani invents a world in itself, fascinating and timeless, where the vases do not collect flowers but candles, prayers, rituals, imaginations capable of rethinking or healing the world. His black sculptures with sensitive, irregular surfaces, bearing the trace of their creator’s hand, sometimes themselves borrow the shapes of the human body, referring us all the more to our mortal condition. To compose the scenography of Symposion, the Parisian ceramist collaborated with florist Ethan Gao of Studio KO.
“The fact that Blandine Chabani’s creations are not intended for floral use forced me to go beyond the usual framework of my work, he comments. In particular, I spontaneously imagined a squash surrounded by an orange flower, a gloriosa.” What will one day remain of our civilization, today threatened by wars and climate change? Blandine Chabani’s new pieces invite us to a meditative introspection on the subject of our own vulnerability.
“The banquet”, ephemeral exhibition on Thursday November 28, 2024, from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. at the Espace Temple gallery, 139 rue du temple, Paris 3rd.
