Claire Frechet – Ceramic Geographies

Claire Fréchet explores in her ceramic creations an imaginary geography. Her work combines contrasting reliefs inspired from geology to archetypal mineral forms. The spheres, the tapered or hammered volumes are traversed by landscapes that unfold amongst the shadows and glints of an oxidized patinated, smoky ceramic. The surfaces are first satin polished and then, under the hand, tears and carvings appear. Volcanic sands, crystallized on the ceramic are sometimes enhanced with gold leaves. Each work is unique. Every vase is a sculpture, an opportunity for experimentation, an original fusion of materials. Claire Fréchet’s ceramics are metaphors turned into art, telluric phenomena that sensually take shape.
Claire Fréchet has been a ceramist for 15 years; her inventive mind thrived before on literature as she was a poetry translator. She received a very special initiation into ceramics in a Mexican community. Indigenous artists taught her how to burnish clay with an agata stone and primitive pottery firing. These firings are a very slow and delicate process whose origins are from the pre-Columbian period. Upon returning to France, she attended to sculpture workshops at the Duperré School and learned traditional potter techniques in Paris.
Claire works in a unique and inspiring environment, her atelier in Gouvieux is located in an old troglodyte house nestled into a limestone cliff whose luminous rock was used to build Notre-Dame and the Louvre. Her work is featured in luxury residential and hospitality projects, such as projects by Christian Liagre and the AMAN Hotel in New York.
“Ceramics is the formulation of a mineral language based on a fundamental resource: clay. As a ceramicist I operate on the clay and cause the opposite transmutation of that which it underwent during its formation - the decomposition of rock. My artworks connect with the processes of life, going beyond inert matter as if echoing the energy that crosses the cosmos.”
“To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour.” William Blake, Auguries of Innocence