BERTHET-AITTOUARES

Daniel Pontoreau is an artist who uses only ceramics as a material, without being a ceramist or potter. He is a sculptor who creates forms that are both pure and composite. He kneads them, fires them in a kiln at a very high temperature, then arranges them on the floor or wall in a carefully thought-out order in space. His balls are composite artefacts embedded in the ground or riddling the walls like fragments of meteorites falling from the sky. Or placed on a tray of refractory clay tiles. We find the same asceticism in the search for a balance between fullness and emptiness. This work between the carnal and the spiritual is very popular in Japan, where he often exhibits. Pontoreau adds to this Zen aspect of imbalance, warm colours and sensuality. His stoneware, solidified in slabs like paintings or in heterogeneous stones, sometimes glazed, has holes, scratches and grooves and, despite its weight, seems light and vibrates. Many artworks embody a dance, pairing up hard and soft, resulting in a solid part nestling in a concave part, like a hazelnut in its shell. White porcelain, for example, can be curled up in a coarser bogue. He also makes long-necked jars, brick towers and lumpy termite mounds, because everything is landscape in this multifaceted work.

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Elisabeth Vedrenne, Connaissance des arts, May 2023