Laurent Craste Wields His Axe

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Laurent Craste, "Révolution III," 2016

porcelain, glaze and axe, 30" x 12" x 17"

Montreal-based ceramic artist Laurent Craste sinks axes, as well as knives and baseball bats – the kind of weapons wielded by thugs and sometimes protesters against class privilege – into elegant porcelain vases. You might expect an explosion of clay shards, but it’s less the moment of violence that Craste exploits than the implied attack on the art object.

For instance, in Révolution III, the vase’s white porcelain seemingly warps and distends to accommodate the axe, defying the brittle properties of fired clay and suggesting instead something more fluid and malleable, albeit frozen in time.

Don’t worry, Craste jokes: “No vase was hurt during this process.”

In other words, he builds the sculptures in their final punctured, battered and lopsided shapes, adding the actual weapon as a finishing touch after firing. “It looks violent, but it’s not a violent process,” he says. “It’s all completely controlled.”

Craste is showing 17 pieces from Abuse, an ongoing series he has worked on for more than seven years, at the Back Gallery Project in Vancouver from June 8 to July 1. It’s his first show in Western Canada.

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Laurent Craste, "Petits charniers décoratifs," 2016

porcelain and glaze. Boys: 7" x 7" x 6', Girls: 7" x 6" x 6"

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Laurent Craste, "Épuration II," 2016

porcelain, glaze, 14.8 x 27.9 x 27.6 cms.

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Laurent Craste, "Iconocraste au pied de biche," 2014

porcelain, glaze and crowbar, 21" x 18" x 24"

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Part of the work’s appeal is its juxtaposition of opposites – the pristine white classical vase would look at home in Versailles, while the axe with its worn handle (and splash of red paint) has clearly seen better days.

But the work has added layers of meaning and ambiguity. Craste is interested in conceptual understandings of the decorative object, not only sociologically and historically, but also ideologically and aesthetically. Thus, his work is resolutely political at its core, considering art as an instrument of power, not simply as an ostentatious display of wealth. He is particularly interested in the destruction of art during political upheavals, whether the French Revolution, China’s Cultural Revolution, or as we’ve seen in recent years, during battles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It’s an evocation of the destruction of artworks, but they are still artworks,” Craste observes. “It’s not a critique of collecting artworks, not at all. I am still producing artworks that are in the market and that are collected.”

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Laurent Craste, "Dépouille aux fleurs ‘Bleu de Delft'," 2012/2015

porcelain, glaze, decals, gold and nails (edition of 3/5), 16" x 15" x 6" (Ed.1/5 in the permanent collection of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.)

On his website, Craste, with his shaved head, sturdy build and grubby coveralls, humorously poses himself bearing a hammer as he eyes a classical vase nailed to a white wall. He almost looks the part of the self-appointed heavy, but actually leans to the intellectual – he has several university degrees, including a Master’s degree in fine art from the Université de Québec à Montréal, and comes from a middle class family in France. He has lived in Canada for more than 25 years and received the prestigious Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramists in 2003 from the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery in Waterloo, Ont.