Claire Lindner

L'air est une racine (The air is a root)

May 5 - June 28, 2018

Claire Lindne - Blue Flow 2018, stoneware h. 29 and 34 cm. Photo Anthony Girardi

Borrowed from a surrealist poem by Jean Arp, the title of this exhibition reflects the new sources of inspiration encountered by ceramic artist Claire Lindner for her second solo show at the Galerie de l’Ancienne Poste.
The starting point of this work is the universe of entangled vegetation at the heart of the Canadian forest she visited in 2016 – a time of exploration during which the artist was able to observe the different strata of that densely fertile flora and feel the fragile balance where each life leans on another to exist in an ever-renewed cycle.
. It was a striking experience contrasting with her native area in the foothills of the Pyrenees, where the increasingly arid climate hardens the landscape. Living the drought on a daily basis exacerbates one’s sensitivity to environments where water flows naturally and vigorous greenery replaces yellowing vegetation. Once back to her “roots”, Claire Lindner conveyed through her artwork the energy and vitality she felt during her stay in Quebec: her way of constructing the forms rests on the very idea of elements bonding with each other, accumulating and superimposing until they become a structured unit.
Yet how does one convey the movements of air, the flowing of water, the blowing of wind and the turmoil of desire? The notion of physical and mental flow has been guiding the evolution of Claire Lindner’s aesthetics. From this new formal research have sprung twenty or so sculptures where pattern, structure and movement are one and the same.

Exhibition catalogue
Claire Lindner in the Revue de la céramique et verre

Inquiétante étrangeté" has often been used by art historians and critics. So much so that we hesitate to reinterpret this term of Freudian origin, which has been used to describe many paintings by Giorgio De Chirico, René Magritte and other Surrealists. Yet these are the words that come to mind when looking at Claire Lindner's ceramics. Undefined forms: flowers, buds, organs, elements in gestation and new species in the process of blossoming or closing in on their inner selves...
Yet this poem is also an oxymoron filled with elation while blending different elements – Jean Arp writes, “the stones are filled with air”… Associating weight with something weightless reminds us of the contradictions that Claire Lindner likes to use to build her artwork: a seemingly soft, smooth texture where there is actually a hard, rough material; colours that blend together and seem to be deposited in gradations even though she uses bright, almost supernatural dyes.
. […]The pieces play less on a notion of balance than before in order to develop that of entanglement. From those former images of bushy leaves, small limbs or long fingers emerge in between the living and the dormant or in the movement of some seaweed on the ocean floors. Other pieces seem closed and secluded, bringing back to the table the notions of empty and full, as we do not know what hides inside of them.
Marie Maertens
Journalist and curator
Excerpt from Excerpt from the exhibition catalogueMarch 2018