GOD IS STRANGER,
PERROTIN GALLERY, NEW YORK

“A creative dreamer, an undeniable seducer, and the ultimate outcast, through his practice, Johan Creten essentially strives against progressivity in favor of a position that suggests dancing rather than marching, a position that embraces curves rather than straight lines. Challenging the pace of the reality in which we live, his artworks—whether monumental or minute, fragile or rough, straightforward or impenetrable—constitute a firm declaration against the traditional idea of dynamism, against the avant-garde, against the ‘new’ for its own sake. Creten’s response, which is dynamic but unconventionally so, consists of objects that are controversial in the etymological sense of the word—from the Latin controversus, meaning ‘turned in an opposite direction, disputed, and turned against.’ With this attitude Johan Creten has realized his unique desire to question modernism through various tools, weapons, incantations and incarnations. Trying to categorize his many tentacles, trying to count his (sculpted, casted, fired) armies of figures and forms against progress, five ideas might come to mind: ‘tactile experiences,’ ‘unconventional displays,’ ‘identity issues,’ ‘triggering memories’ and ‘fearless virtuosity.”

Nicola Trezzi