Laurent Petit has said before that the work he creates is both pictorial and sculptural. The high importance he imparts to white may evoke the very open projection space of the viewer facing a painting. According to the artist, “It also confers a different, stronger value, to what comes to challenge white, namely the concretions of matter and next, the traces of colour. Everything I lay as an addition to white transcends it and allows me to seek an enigmatic minerality.” He recalls that white imposed itself from the start, under the influence of sculptor Gordon Baldwin as well as painter Joan Mitchell and, obviously, Cy Twombly. “I think white allows me to carry a form of neutrality and calmness as a counterpoint to very colourful areas, especially when I think back to my first ceramics which had more matter, more grain. Cy Twombly once declared that the white areas of his paintings could be considered as neo-romantic areas of remembrance. This definition suits me perfectly, since I consider my sculptures as commemorative spaces on which I spread out traces.”

Marie Maertens
Art critic & curator.
Extract from the exhibition catalogue.

• Catalogue only in French
• Press Release

Élégances du chaos

Mythologies

Vestiges