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Marbles & Clowns

Pierre Charpin presents at Galerie kreo, London, a collection of small marble tables and a series of ten clown vases, a new subject on the vase he designed for Sèvres.

“Marbles & Clowns”: as titles go, this one couldn’t really be any clearer about what lies in wait in the exhibition.

The marbles come in the form of consoles and low tables. And then there are the clowns. Ten clown faces, which appear on the immaculate porcelain sides of the vases designed several years ago by Charpin for the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres, one of France’s best-known ceramic factories.

““Marbles & Clowns”. And in that order… it just sounds better, and you can never underestimate the importance of a title. But also because that’s the order they arrived on the page: the marbles simply came to me first. The clowns followed later… they weren’t part of the programme, not least because there never was a programme. Once again, the only entities were the unknown – the unexpected. “Marbles & Clowns” is a show in which each component plays its role with assurance, and where the “&” represents the intersection of everything that is created.” says Charpin about the exhibition.