Opening its annual programme of exhibitions of contemporary ceramics, the Galerie de l’Ancienne Poste at Toucy in the Yonne devotes its space to the gallery’s permanent artists.  The 2015 exhibition is dedicated mainly to the recent work of the ceramist, Charlotte Poulsen on the theme of the giraffe.

‟I have repeatedly seen giraffes across the plain, with their incomparable grace, vegetative almost as if he was not a question of a herd of animals, but a family of rare colossal flowers, spotted and mounted on tall stems.”
Karen Blixen, Out of Africa

Of Danish origin, Charlotte Poulsen was particularly impressed by her compatriot Karen Blixen’s literary work which evokes the animal world of the African Continent.  It was thus that the giraffe very soon became the emblematic animal of the ceramist’s work.  Deliberately non- realistic, without the long thin legs which characterize the animal, the expression of Charlotte Poulsen’s giraffe bears witness to a strong personality and a mastery of beautiful pictorial ceramic plaques.  The realization in 2014 of a giraffe of 3.60 metres tall, now displayed in the Jardin des Oules in the Gard, gave rise simultaneously to the birth of smaller sized pieces, exhibited today in the gallery.

A selection of works by the ceramists Gisèle Buthod-Garçon, Robert Deblander, Agathe Larpent, Nadia Pasquer, Brigitte Pénicaud, and Camille Virot also figure in this new installation.