Alistair Danhieux, The Force of Earth

Alistair Danhieux, sculpture grès émaillé, 2015, h. 38 x 15 x 13 cm.

Organic, abstract, the new works of Alistair Danhieux (born 1975) will doubtless surprise those who knew the utilitarian pottery of his beginnings.  “One day a problem with the kiln inspired me to change direction.  I started creating purely decorative objects, round shapes, with pure lines, with very graphic decorations.” explains this youthful forty-something year old from Crewe, England.  Passionate about art from childhood, he was influenced by both the research of the great ceramist Robert Deblander, and by the sculptures of Henry Moore and Brancusi or more recently by those of Botero and Anish Kapoor. After travelling widely, notably in India and in West Africa, Alistair Danhieux set down his suitcases in 2003 in la Nièvre, where he followed a training course of  a year and a half at Cnifop, the pottery school in Saint-Amand-en-Puisaye, prior to exhibiting at Toucy, in Paris and at the Cité de la Céramique de Sèvres. “A few years ago, I felt the need to break away from using the wheel and I started working in a more sculptural way, freer.  For this exhibition I plunged into earthenware, more robust  than porcelain, in order to make pieces that would be able to resist and stand the test of time.” Fifteen new pieces to discover, in which the artist has, for the first time, experimented with enamel whose light reveals the delicateness of the sculpted volumes.

Guillaume Morel, Journalist & Art Critic

• Press release Alistair Danhieux