Iconoclasts marks the American museum debut for French-born Canadian ceramist Laurent Craste. Over the past decade, Craste has committed a wide range of indignities and abuse against his ornate vases and urns, including pummeling them with baseball bats and crowbars and piercing them with arrows. Despite the violence that runs through his work, Craste has a great passion for historical porcelain. Working with porcelain allows Craste to explore the prestige and power of upper-class society, but also inequality and the strain that is placed on working people. The anthropomorphic nature of Craste’s vases echoes the human body, making it no surprise that people feel strong emotions when seeing a helpless vase struck by a baseball bat. Triggering these strong emotions in his audience allows Craste to connect on a deeper level as he asks questions about class, money, and power.
Join us for a special artist talk with Craste on Thursday, February 5.
Laurent Craste
Iconocraste à la barre à clou II, 2019
Porcelain, glaze, bright gold, and crowbar
27 5/8 x 14 9/16 x 20 1/2 inches
Everson Museum of Art; Museum purchase, 2022.30
Laurent Craste
Carcasse IX (Carcass IX), 2024/25
Porcelain, glaze, custom decals, burnished mat gold,
butcher hook, and chain
25 × 11 4/5 × 7 1/2 inches
Courtesy of the artist
Laurent Craste: Iconoclasts is made possible with support from the Winifred & De Villo Sloan, Jr. Charitable Fund, Hohmann Gallery, and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. The Everson is supported by the General Operating Support program, a regrant program of the County of Onondaga with the support of County Executive J. Ryan McMahon II, and the Onondaga County Legislature, administered by CNY Arts; and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
About the Artist:
French-born artist Laurent Craste lives and works in the village of Saint-Damien in Quebec. Craste has received numerous awards and honors throughout his career (Winifred Shantz Award, grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Quebec Arts Council, Jean-Marie Gauvreau Award, etc.). His works are on display in many private and public collections (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Public Collection of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, Claridge Collection, Majudia Collection, etc.). On the occasion of their entry into the permanent collection of the Musée des Métiers d’Art du Québec in 2018, 15 of his works have been recognized as of exceptional interest and of national importance by the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board.
During his more than 20-year career, Laurent Craste has participated in more than 60 group exhibitions in Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia. Among others, his work has been exhibited in New York (Museum of Moving Image), in Ottawa (Carleton University Art Gallery), as well as in Paris (Cité de la mode et du design). He has also had more than a dozen solo exhibitions, including at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Tom Thomson Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Burlington in Ontario, as well as the Hohmann Fine Arts Gallery in Palm Desert, California.
