Twenty years ago, Johan Creten presented a political and committed performance - “C'est dans ma nature” - a work which blends ceramics, brick, and bas-relief. This work found refuge in a Belgian school for 8 years. His journey continues at the Transit Gallery, then to new adventures at the Musée de la Piscine in Roubaix as part of an exhibition dedicated to the artist from March to May 2022. It is on this occasion that the Transit Gallery publishes a set of three singular booklets, declined in three languages the artist holds dear (English, French, and Flemish).

"Creten derived the title C’est dans ma nature from the film The Crying Game. In the scene with the parable of the Scorpion and the Frog, we hear the scorpion’s final response :

A Scorpion wants to cross the river but he can’t swim
Goes to a Frog who can and asks for a ride

Frog says: I’ll give you a ride on my back...
you’ll go and sting me
Scorpion replies: it will not be in my interest to sting you
Since I’ll be on your back we’ll both drown

Frog thinks for a while and accepts the deal
Takes the Scorpion on his back, braves the waters
Halfway over feels a burning spear in his side
And realizes the Scorpion has darted him after all

And as they both sink beneath the waves
The Frog cries out: why you just sting me Mr. Scorpion
For now we both will drown
Scorpion replies: I can’t help it — IT’S IN MY NATURE 

With his absurd behaviour and implausible argument, the scorpion attacks twice. The creature’s sting raises colossal philosophical questions and causes immense pain. Our first reaction is one of dis- may, anger and incomprehension at the extent of the betrayal and cowardice. The scorpion is an out-and-out fraudster. It just goes to show, once again, that no one is to be trusted until they have proven their integrity. But doesn’t the saying ‘every bird sings its own song’ apply to the scorpion as well? Rather like ‘we are who we are, and we do what we do’? Is nature malleable? Besides, don’t we know from our own experience that certain natures are simply incompatible? Where does culture begin and where does it end? What is culture?

When Johan Creten was asked at the end of the Berg en Dal broadcast on Radio Klara about his credo, the artist surprisingly replied “staying true to the vivisector” :

A vivisector is someone who does the cruellest thing you can do, but with the idea of doing something good. The vivisector is perhaps also a kind of metaphor for the artist. As an artist, I have to cut into my own flesh — and also into the world around me — to see how it works.

The scorpion punctures the frog’s flesh with its sting. One would suspect it of less than vivisection: the literal cutting into a living animal (from: vivus, life and sectio, cutting). However, the scorpion commits murder and is an ordinary murderer (not a vivisector). Since the nineteenth century, vivisection has meant ‘conducting experiments on living animals for scientific purposes’ and, metaphorically, ‘committing an act of ultimate cruelty in the service of good’.

In his sculpture for Aulnay-sous-Bois, Johan Creten sliced into his own flesh and that of the surrounding world in an attempt to understand its workings. He dissects our natural and social environment, takes the pulse of time, and whispers in our ear that it doesn’t work (anymore), that the social fabric has died, that nature is on the verge of extinction, that it is up to us to do something (or nothing) with this information. At the risk of sinking like a brick by default."

"C’est dans ma nature" - Text by Barbara De Coninck, Antwerp, 3 June, 2021