Johan Creten

A vivisected bird of prey, a dead fly, a phallic grasshopper; last summer, Johan Creten exhibited one hundred and twenty pieces of his hybrid bestiary in a flamboyant exhibition in Orléans. The ardent dialogue between his work and the permanent collection of the Musée des Beaux-Arts ended in September, but eleven monumental bronze pieces remain on display in the city streets until Summer 2025.

On the forecourt of the Cathedral, we can appreciate a chiropteran gargoyle, which seems to come straight from Robert de Montesquiou’s verses on bats, taking a break from its flight. Docile, De Vleermuis (The Bat, 2014-2019) can be climbed by young and old. A clear-sighted owl watches over the park of the Hôtel Groslot. Entitled Europa’s dream (2016-22), this small sculpture seems to allude to the history of this dwelling, which has been central in French and European chronicles since the Renaissance.

In the Parc Louis-Pasteur, a strange creature, Le Cœur qui déborde, (The Overflowing heart, 2022-2023), opens its abyssal heart to onlookers, while alongside it a primitive and totemic Venus Pudica, The Herring (2018) arises, dissimulating the taboo of her genitalia behind a herring. In Hôtel Cabu’s lonely courtyard, an anonymous being (Sans titre, 1998-2023) twists in a deafening silent scream. 

Then, a body suddenly appears in the big perspective of the arcades of the Musée des Beaux-Arts: a golden hallucination of sickening excrescences. This sculpture, Why does Strange Fruit always look so Sweet? (1998–2015), brings us back to antique partially gilded statues and to Billie Holiday’s song “Strange Fruit.

Creten first imagined and created this work in Mexico between 1998 and 1999 and reworked it during his stay in Miami the following years. While earlier iterations of the work exist, the cast for the version presented in Orléans dates to 2015. Evidence of the fact that the artist is the ambassador of "slow art".

Within the museum, visitors could enjoy, along with the masterpieces from the ancient art collection, the sculptor’s glazed ceramics and colorful sketches. The artist shared his portfolio for the first time in an institutional exhibition, revealing the intimate part of his inspiration. The institution’s four graphic art cabinets presented seventy-three drawings and several models that revealed the artist’s creative fire, from the initial spark hastily captured on paper to the magma of bronze casting in the clay baking furnace. Several drawings from Creten’s early career demonstrate the importance of words in the work of this sculptor and admirer of Cy Twombly. On these sheets, the assembled letters look like partitions and become political poems. Alongside these pamphlets, we could see that in the 1980s the artist’s early experiments with drawing on computer, using digital tools. Some of these are almost Dadaist assemblies, like William Burroughs’s cut ups, while others are more experimental collages.

At the heart of the room devoted to postwar abstraction, a large, partially glazed white clay coffin, created during his American stay, How can I turn cold into gold? (2000), was presented on a wooden platform. Around it, seven seats from his Bolders series invited the public to observe the upcoming show of alchemical transmutation.

Take a front-row seat to the conflagration and metamorphosis!

More than just an alchemist, Creten appeared in this exhibition as a true pyromaniac, such were the burning subjects he tackled. Two roosters, caught in the heat of passion, exalted desire, love, and sexuality and addressed themes of intolerance and discrimination. La Perle Noire – Mare nostrum (The Black Pearl – Mare nostrum, 2023-2024), confronted with Orientalist paintings, questioned the notion of exoticism. Les Éloges de l’ombre (2022-2023), glittering bas-reliefs with golden meanders, ironically crowned the ambitious painters of the Romantic generation in a sort of bonfire of the vanities.

The floor of the rooms devoted to the Age of Enlightenment was strewn with woven baskets containing ceramic heads, recalling the tragic conclusion of the Revolution. In the secrecy of the Cabinet Gaudier-Brzeska, in the museum’s basement, visitors could finally discover the most ardent part of the artist’s work. The walls of this room were covered with erotic drawings and explicit sculptures such as La Vulve de roses (The Vulva of roses, 2005), created in Sèvres porcelain. This summer, the sculptor played with the inferno of history, the incandescence of the senses, and the fire of art!