The warm fragrance of flowers becomes the metallic sheen of ceramics; the enveloping wash of their perfume is suggested by the organic undulations of the day petals.

"A leitmotif since his residency at Villa Medici in 1996-1997, the theme and title Odore di Femmina borrow from both Mozart's opera Don Giovanni and Dino Risi's film Parfum de femme. Initially conceived as rose paintings, these pieces have become busts of women in the antique style, of the "anadyomene" type with an interrupted movement of the arms. Johan Creten proceeds by a visual metonymy consisting in evoking the perfume of the female being by representing the flower, itself a symbol of the vulva, the receptacle. The work is particularly attractive for its classical beauty, the technical performance involved in the manual pastillage of all the roses. It also impresses by the expression of the fragility of existence and a certain fear of death. The artist initially created two torsos in porcelain cookie, one of which (now in a private collection) was shown in 2006 at the Louvre during the exhibition Contrepoint 2, at the Musée des Beaux-arts de Rouen in the exhibition Fiction Céramique, then at the Wallace Collection in London. The other cookie piece was acquired by the Winnick collection in Los Angeles (USA). The enamelled torsos are also published in two copies: the first is in a private collection, the second is the model acquired by the Musée des Arts Décoratifs."

Frédéric Bodet