Between homage, transmission, and abstraction, the vase becomes a plastic language with infinite possibilities. With works by Maison Matisse, Walter Usai, and Alice Gavalet, the vase is freed from its utilitarian function to become a surface for expression, a trace of memory, or visual experimentation. Each approach reveals a unique way of dialoguing with the material, history, and gesture.
Maison Matisse, a legacy of color
Founded in 2019 by Jean-Matthieu Matisse, Maison Matisse celebrates the legacy of painter Henri Matisse by inviting designers to perpetuate his pictorial universe by interpreting it in the form of art objects. The vase becomes a canvas, a medium for intense patterns and colors. Jaime Hayon draws inspiration from the Mediterranean to create joyful volumes fired up to seven times. Alessandro Mendini, meanwhile, is inspired by the purity of lines and transposes Matisse's abstraction into sensual forms, requiring up to eight firings. The Bouroullec brothers combine brick, metal, and earthenware to create landscapes of light. This plurality of techniques highlights refined craftsmanship, at the crossroads of ceramic tradition and contemporary design.
The pieces are currently on display at the Galerie Negropontes in Paris until September 10, and will then be presented at the Galerie in Venice until November 22.
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Ceramiche Walter Usai, hands in the clay
In contrast to Maison Matisse's editorial and collaborative approach, Walter Usai continues a family tradition rooted in Sardinian soil for five generations. In Assemini, a small village in Sardinia, each vase tells the epic story of a craft passed down from father to son. The manufacture of these pieces requires an intimate understanding of the material and constant adaptation to the vagaries of the weather. Walter Usai reproduces traditional models such as jugs, jars, and pots, while updating their lines to suit contemporary aesthetics. His work combines respect for the past with openness to innovation, often in collaboration with other artists. Here, the vase remains an everyday object, but one that is enhanced by history and the craftsman's skill.
Alice Gavalet, ornament as structure
For Alice Gavalet, a graduate of the École des Arts Décoratifs, the vase is no longer a container but a sculpture, a formal construction derived from drawing. In her exhibition "Plates Formes," the artist overturns traditional hierarchies. It is no longer the form that precedes the decoration, but the motif that generates the form. The interior of the vase becomes visible, the color resembles paint, and the enamel plays on superimposition. The subtle tones and the presence of black, created by applying successive layers, give her pieces an almost pictorial intensity. It is a work of visual craftsmanship, as thoughtful as it is instinctive, where each curve responds to a line, each surface becomes an experiment.
https://www.pron.fr/fr/artistes/artist2
While Maison Matisse offers an encounter between painting and design, Walter Usai conveys a living memory of the earth, and Alice Gavalet explores the vase as a plastic language. All three show that contemporary ceramics is a hybrid territory where the object is freed from its function to become a means of expression. Through their works, the vase tells as much about the history of those who shape it as it does about the eras it has lived through.
Each in their own way, these artists and workshops perpetuate the art of craftsmanship while offering it new perspectives. The vase, an ancestral figure, is thus more alive than ever.
