Daniel Pontoreau

The authors

• Collection Keramis

  The titles :

  Daniel Pontoreau - Before the landscape 2022

  Frank Steyaert - Memorabilia 2017

  Gisèle Buthod-Garçon - The earth, simply 2018

  Bai Ming - Earth Vibrations 2019

• Daniel Pontoreau

  Daniel Pontoreau belongs to a generation of artists born in the aftermath of the Second World War for whom the artistic possibilities of ceramics instantaneously proved apparent. As a young artist, he was confronted, on the one hand, with the prevalence of figurative ceramic sculpture which spread throughout Europe in the post-war period, and, on the other, with the golden age of art pottery and its prevailing ideology. Yet, at the end of the “Glorious Thirties”, Daniel Pontoreau did not show a veritable interest in this culture of ceramics, which was already well entrenched in most European countries. Indeed, the teenager was fond of painting before taking up sculpture. His influences include some sculptors who are concerned with another reality of the clay, one that is more intangible and environmental. He was especially drawn to the work of American John Mason (1927) and Frenchman Jean Amado (1922-1995). With its ‘Attitudes (that) Become Forms’1, the new English sculpture movement left its mark on him, and he soon became fascinated with the relationship to the landscape in the architecture of such contemporaries as Frank Gehry (1929), Tadao Ando (1941), and Marc Barani (1957).
  
• Dolores Oscari

  Dolorès Oscari has a background in theatre. She initiated the spoken word workshop that she currently runs at the Law School of the University of Mons. Prior to that, she taught phonetics at Mons' Royal Conservatory. In 1990, she started presenting and producing a daily radio programme entitled Rencontre (La Première, RTBF). In 1998, she created, presented, and produced a literary magazine called Si j'ose écrire on RTBF television and radio (Musique 3). In 2004, she was appointed « Literature and Books » advisor in the Cabinet of the Minister of Culture and Audio-visual Affairs. From 2009 and for 10 years, she was director of the literary theatre le Poème 2 in Brussels.
• Ludovic Recchia

  Ludovic Recchia is an art historian and curator specialising in modern and contemporary Belgian ceramics. Curator of the European ceramic collections at the Royal Museum of Mariemont from 2003 to 2022, he is presently director and curator of Keramis (Centre de la Céramique de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles), an institution that he founded in 2015. Since 2016, he has been a member of the International Academy of Ceramics. Over the course of the past twenty years, Ludovic Recchia has curated some thirty thematic and monographic exhibitions, including D’Immatériels lendemains – Porcelaines d’aujourd’hui (2005), Vincent Beague – Porcelaines (2006), Johan Creten – Tour des forces (2007), Marc Feulien – L’Illusion et le Paysage (2008), Piet Stockmans – Designer (2010), Helvetica – Céramique suisse d’aujourd’hui (2011), Claude Aiello et les designers (2012), Clémence Van Lunen – Métamorphoses (2013), La Terre Paysage (2016), Frank Steyaert – Memorabilia (2017), Charlotte Coquen – Tout à l’horizontal (2018) or still, Hugo Meert – Unbreakable (2021).
• Philippe Godderidge

  Born in 1955, Philippe Godderidge is a ceramic artist who lives and works in Normandy. For the past 50 years, he has been exploring the practice of ceramics, which has led him to sculpture, pottery, installations, and drawing. Since 2006, he keeps a « studio diary », available online at philippegodderidge.com.
• Karim Ghaddab

  Karim Ghaddab is an art critic who is a member of the AICA (International Association of Art Critics). He lectures in Art History and Theory at the École Supérieure d'Art et Design de Saint-Étienne and is a researcher and co-founder of the LEM (Laboratoire d'Expérimentation des Modernités). As the author of a large number of catalogue prefaces and forewords, he has contributed to various specialised journals. From 2011 to 2016, he was the artistic director of the festival L'art dans les chapelles (Morbihan). In parallel, he occasionally curates exhibitions.
• Marc Barani

  After studying architecture and stage design, he complemented his education with a degree in anthropology, which took him to Nepal for a year. His multidisciplinary team is composed of architects, scenographers, designers, and landscape architects, according to the project. Today, the Atelier works on various projects of different sizes and nature, ranging from cultural facilities, academic buildings, housing, offices, transport infrastructures, and engineering structures. The team also focuses on developing new building processes. From 1993 to 2003, Marc Barani was a professor of architecture and continues to deliver lectures in France and abroad. In 2008, Le Moniteur awarded him the Prix de l’Équerre d’Argent (the Silver T-square Prize) for his design of the Nice tramway station. In 2013, he was bestowed the Grand prix national de l’architecture. In 2018, he received the Grande Médaille d’Or from the French Académie Royale d’Architecture. In 2015, Marc Barani was actively involved in the Ministry of Culture’s efforts to elaborate a novel national strategy for architecture, for which he headed the « innovation » working group. He is also a member of the « Valeur de l’Architecture » think tank established in 2018. In 2018, he was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts.