"Strangers Welcome"
Perrotin
New York, USA
Solo show

‘Strangers Welcome’ was conceived as a continuation of Johan Creten's 2023 exhibition ‘Le Coeur qui déborde’ at the Abbaye de Beaulieu-en-Rouergue in France. The sculptor displayed his mysterious, colorful creations and new golden bas-reliefs, offering viewers his eclectic metaphors on the human condition.

“Strangers Welcome” is a plunge into a marine universe populated by strange creatures: mermaids and seahorses, motionless on their pedestals, from which the paint seems to spring as if from wounds, like the stigmata of a probable battle. 

In her text included in the exhibition catalog, Leigh Arnolds evokes the figure of  “Moby Dick” from Hermann Melville's epic 1851 novel, which recounts a ship captain's obsessive quest for revenge against a colossal leviathan. Johan Creten's exhibition draws a parallel between “the white whale” - an expression that has become synonymous with obsession since the book's publication - and his own determination, since the 1980s, to elevate ceramics to the status of “high art”. 

Johan Creten’s glittering sculptural reliefs evoke religious imagery. In showcasing these works at Perrotin New York, Creten paid careful attention to the lighting to highlight the multitude of shadows at play in each of the works, a taboo reference to the many crevices of the human body.