Claire Lindner
"Clay is a material you can work with without limits, like a second skin."
Enveloping and mesmerizing, Claire Lindner’s work unfolds through a rich vegetal repertoire, at the boundary of the living. She exalts, in a joyfully colorful entanglement of plant life, a nature as monumental as it is fragile, reclaiming its rights. Movement, omnipresent, reflects its extraordinary vitality, while a texture resembling velvet highlights its softness. The duality of her sculptures lies in this manipulation of the senses. For when touched, the surface, seemingly so soft, reveals itself as rough, coarse, and unveils its gravity. A dichotomy between the living and the extinct; a subtle metaphor for a rich ecosystem whose life is so precarious.
Daughter of ceramicists, nothing initially destined the young Claire for working with clay. A dreamer, literary, and a dedicated illustrator, she wanted to set herself apart and follow her own path. From painting to graphic design, to glasswork, her journey took her from the Art Deco school in Strasbourg to the Canadian forests, where the lush nature captured her imagination.
"The stones are filled with air," wrote the surrealist poet Jean Arp, who strongly influenced the work of Claire, who seeks to excessively stimulate the viewer's imagination. To bring weight to that which has none… or the reverse! Fascinated by the underwater world, by phenomena of weightlessness, and emerging forms, Claire Lindner’s work is exhibited and collected worldwide. Hypnotic, even unsettling for those who might see in them the hair of a Gorgon, mysterious because they are secluded, aerial as though carried by an imaginary wind, and yet so static because they are so mineral-like, Claire Lindner's creations have already left a mark on contemporary aesthetics, making this French artist a key figure in 21st-century ceramics.
After studying at the Art Deco school in Strasbourg and Camberwell College of Arts in London, she set up a family workshop in the heart of the Pyrenees. She has participated in many residencies, notably in Xian, China, and Vallauris, France. In recent years, she has participated in numerous and significant exhibitions: "Ceramics Now" in Paris, "Formes vivantes" at Sèvres – National Museum and Manufacture, "Contre Nature" at MOCO in Montpellier, and "Toucher Terre" at the Villa Datris Foundation in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. A finalist for the 2023 LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize, her piece Buisson N°2 was exhibited at the Noguchi Museum in New York for the occasion. In June 2023, the Théodore Deck Museum dedicated a personal exhibition to her work.
