Catalogue of the exhibition : “I PECCATI” by Johan Creten

The catalogue of the exhibition “I PECCATI” by Johan Creten is now available.

“I PECCATI” curated by Noëlle Tissier: 5 October 2020 > 23 May 2021

Catalogue sold at the price of 41 € TTC

The catalogue is available at Villa Medicis’s boutique (open from Monday to Friday except Tuesday, from 2pm to 4.30pm) or online on Perrotin and Almine Rech websites.

Johan Creten, a forerunner, unclassifiable and against the flow, is now widely recognised as one of the main sculptors who, from the 1980s onwards, contributed to the revival of ceramics in contemporary creation.

With “I PECCATI”, the eponymous catalogue of the exhibition presented at the Académie de France – Villa Médicis, Johan Creten orchestrates a series of iconic works from his career. Pondered in collaboration with Noëlle Tissier, curator of the exhibition, “I PECCATI” brings together for the first time in Italy and on such a scale, a group of fifty-five works. The art pieces testify the sensitivity of the artist in the face of profound changes in society and a moral conscience that is more shaken than ever. Alongside his works in bronze, ceramics and resin, the artist presents a selection of historical works from the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries from his personal collection.

Divided into 12 sections revealing 12 sacrilegious and impure wounds, the show “I PECCATI” plunges the reader into the abyss of a prolific creation, nourished by historical references, hidden connections as well as intellectual and artistic surprises.

Each part, placed under the ambivalent and dual symbol of a subjective and imperfect morality, is introduced by a text by Colin Lemoine questioning Man’s relation to sin, all between adoration and blasphemy. As for Nicolas Bourriaud, in his introductory text, he returns to the work of Johan Creten, haunted by the notions of good and evil, exorcism and voluptuousness.

“With Johan Creten, there are not seven sins. Seven, a relentless number similar to the number of sacraments in the Bible and the number of hills in Rome. Here, sins are infinite and limitless, inexhaustible. They cannot be counted, they are barely identifiable.
Sins are not all capital, they can be imperial, imperious, peripheral, insidious, insignificant, invisible. They are always beyond calculation and language. »
Colin Lemoine

This catalogue has been published in collaboration with the Académie de France in Rome – Villa Medici
as well as the Almine Rech and Perrotin galleries.