Laurent Petit was born in 1962 in Bourges (France). Graduated in 1987 from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, he started as a designer in a large household appliance company. In 1995, he chose to become a ceramist and attended the training course of the Maison de la Céramique in Mulhouse. Since 1996,
he lives and works in Francueil in the Loire Valley.

“For more than twenty years, my commitment in ceramics has been based on the desire to create works that are both sculptural and pictorial, breaking with tradition, vessels and fine glazes. Neither a ceramist stuck in tradition, nor a visual artist detached from the material, I seek to combine an intimate knowledge of clay with freedom of concept and autonomy of sculptural expression.
My works are not the demonstration of a technical know-how but the assertion of a personal relationship to the world and the power of plural evocation of a ceramic volume. I consider them as three-dimensional paintings on which I display a pictorial language with ceramic means.
Beyond an immersion into ancient tales or memories of distant civilizations, the aim is to question the way of conveying them today, at the junction of classical sculpture and formlessness. On the line between figuration and abstraction, each of my sculptures is a focus on memory or mythical action, memory set in an enigmatic minerality.
Concretions of matter, glaze trickles due to uncertain melting, splashes or drips… so many signs that refer to the passage of time and the slow erosion of beings and things. Memory traces and emotional scoria of the ceramic gesture.
Ambiguous rubble, unknown volumes, improbable objects emerging from imaginary archaeological strata, disturbing reminiscences of lost battles, grandiose or intimate, in the folds of memory.”

Laurent Petit/ Profile / New Ceramics / March-April 2021