An art town whose potters’ knowhow has attracted renowned painters, Vallauris is holding its 24th Ceramics Biennial. A medium that artists all over the world are reinventing.
Arriving at the Madoura studio in 1946, Picasso wrote some of the most important chapters in the history of artists and ceramics here in Vallauris Golfe-Juan. In his footsteps came Chagall, Brauner and Matisse. That tradition is now being carried on by the Pôle Céramique due to open in 2020. “The Pôle will be centred on the Madoura pottery and include an advanced school of ceramics and artists’ residences,” enthuses Sandra Benadretti, curator-in-chief of Vallauris’s Musée Magnelli-Musée de la Céramique that this year forms the international biennial’s hub. In all, 150 works by artists will be displayed in six venues during this 24th biennial, an anthology of contemporary creativity in France, the Netherlands, Italy and elsewhere, not to mention the Biennial Fringe in numerous studios and galleries all over town.
Mixing materials
Step into the world of Bertozzi & Casoni at the Espace Grandjean, their contemporary vanities impressive in their realism; or that of Christin Johansson in the Salle Arias, one of the Scandinavian scene’s most radical mixed-media artists for her performances. Discover South Korea’s artists at the Salle Eden, and at the Musée Magnelli the diversity of the work of the winners in the 2016 competition, along with Kim Joon’s digital pictures of tattooed bodies. “However diverse the paths taken by these creatives, their common ground can be seen in their capacity for dialogue,” sums up Biennale coordinator Céline Graziani. Dialogues between pottery techniques and techniques borrowed from other art forms, between artist, artisan and designer, and between cultures on different continents.
Jusqu’au 31 octobre
Musée Magnelli et autres lieux à Vallauris Golfe-Juan
Tél. 04 93 64 71 83
Biennale Off
dans les ateliers et galeries de la ville
Tél. 04 93 63 82 58
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