Peter De Cleyn

Exhibition Sober Poetry - September-October 2023

Peter De Cleyn - Mieke Everaet

° Mechelen, 1954

As a ceramist, Peter is particularly attracted to elements in which there is a trace of imperfection; rust, weathered branches, etc.. His creations are somewhere between functional and artistic. They are not functional utensils, but poetic objects that first and foremost testify to the emptiness they envelop. Emptiness is the guiding principle for Peter. And repetition. The ceramic objects are often not solitary. After all, the emptiness he explores is not the emptiness of loneliness, but that of the fullness of things and thoughts, of the richness and complexity of time and matter. (freely adapted from Prof. Dr. Stalpaert, Ghent University, from the book “Dubbelezijde/double face”)
As an enthusiast of the lute, he spends every day in the sound world of music from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By chance, a few months ago the project “Testudo” emerged in his ceramics studio: a number of free visual associations born from the lute, its shape and the often mysterious titles of the repertoire.
In his small sculptures he often combines earth, tormented and baked, with a number of collected pieces of wood and metal that were lying around in his studio, but which continued to appeal to him because of the traces of time they bear. Melancholy is not far off.
“Even for non-Luthomaniacs,” he writes, “some aesthetic qualities could be discovered in it… and some sober poetry. “Testudo” is precisely the Latin name long given to a tortoise and later assigned to the lute. There is some similarity in form, but also a common symbolism around the concepts of “homeliness” and “silence”.
(adapted from the introduction from the brochure “Testudo” by Peter De Cleyn)