Alice Riehl, Tresor I, FR, 2022

By combining French decorative arts motifs, organic imagery, and contemporary motivations into visual poetry, French artist Alice Riehl’s porcelain wall murals exist in a liminal space between the natural and constructed worlds. Nurtured by the memory of her grandmother’s needlework, Riehl explores the combination of porcelain and lace, working the peculiar texture of this marriage into a personal signature of her botanical inspired ceramic works.

Trésor was directly influenced by Riehl’s explorations along various shorelines worldwide. The Trésor wall sculptures serve as a fusion of two realms united by their connection to the ocean. They also share a commonality in the captivating abstract forms they exhibit, observable when we pause to examine the elements, whether they are massive or minuscule, that nature presents to us.

The artist finds immense joy in extended beach walks, where she observes the ebb and flow of waves and the bustling life along the shore. While exploring the northern-western coast of the United States near the Olympic Peninsula, Riehl was profoundly moved by the massive driftwood stumps that wash ashore from the Pacific Ocean. These majestic pieces of wood, shaped by the relentless forces of water and the surf, left a lasting impression. Interestingly, these silhouettes of driftwood brought to her mind another natural wonder she had encountered: the astonishing patterns created by tiny grains of sand, meticulously arranged by miniature crabs in Thailand.

Porcelain

49.21h x 49.21w in
125h x 125w cm