Camille Virot

Living materials, exogenous combinations, hidden horizons

November 9, 2024 - January 5, 2025

Camille Virot exhibition at the Galerie de l'Ancienne Poste in 2024

For his fourth solo exhibition at the Galerie de l'Ancienne Poste, Camille Virot invites us to discover or rediscover his world, his path through various works, like pebbles sown on the path of an artistic life: Bowls, Boxes, Houses, Heads, Agrarian... testify to what one of France's greatest ceramists himself calls "this constant logic of recycling, recycling ideas, forms, materials...".
The exhibition in Toucy features a selection of pieces representative of the artist's work over the last ten years, covering most of the major "themes" that have run through his work since its beginnings in the 1970s.
Visit Bowls seem to be a basic, fundamental practice for Camille Virot. Visit Bols-genesisThey're caught in a gangue of earth, shards, concrete and pebbles, raw, shapeless matter. These are poetic, powerfully plastic variations on an original model: "it's the idea of the first bowl, that hollow in the rock where water collects".
Visit Boxes are no less abundant or rich in invention. Their bi- or tripartite structure (the container, the lid, and sometimes the "pebble" that seals it) allows for infinite variations, articulations and declensions.
Visit Housesthe Headsare also containers. They, too, work with major archetypes that hark back to the world of origins. This is also true of Agrarianwhich evoke "African dabas and adzes", ancestral farming tools, and illustrate Camille Virot's strong and inspiring ties with Africa.
In all, the exhibition features thirty-four works, all presented to the public for the first time.

Camille Virot Excerpt from the exhibition catalogue

This new exhibition from Camille Virot presents a selection of pieces representative of his work over the last ten years, grouping together most of the major "themes" that have run through his work since its beginnings in the 1970s: Bowls, Boxes, Houses, Heads, Farmers..., and thus testifying to what he himself calls "this constant logic of recycling, recycling ideas, forms, materials...". Recycling, a common practice in the dynamics of a potter's studio, here takes on the value of an aesthetic process and gesture[...].
A word here about the status of the contemporary ceramist. We find it very difficult. For, if they are to make a difference, they have to distance themselves drastically from the currents in which their discipline thrives: the diktat of the pretty and the "deco", the aesthetics of raku trivialized and impoverished through its commercial avatars. The notions of tradition and authenticity are themselves open to question, as they are often reduced to sales arguments. And if the truth is first and foremost that of the material, the material can quickly become a matter of effect, a rusticity of good taste guaranteeing "authenticity". Good taste" contaminates everything. Hence the absolute necessity of reinventing practices, forcing the craft, widening the gap, cultivating the abyss. This, it seems to me, is what Camille Virot does.

Manuel Jover
Journalist, art critic,
Extract from Excerpt from the exhibition catalogue