Simon MANOHA, born 1987, selected exhibitions:
2021: Saint-Sulpice Céramique, Paris, France
2021: “Ceramics Now”, Galerie Italienne, Paris, France
2022: “toucher terre”, l’art de la sculpture céramique, Fondation Villa Datris, L’Isle sur la Sorgue, France
2022: “Ma”, Studio Rö, Milan, Italy
2023: Stadt Museum Hüfingen, Hüfingen, Germany
2024: Saint-Sulpice Céramique, Paris, France
After studying musical improvisation and contemporary philosophy in Paris, Simon Manoha settled in the Ardèche to devote himself to ceramics and photography, and to be as close to nature as possible. His sensitivity to the wild and the natural, his visceral tendency to deviate and his autodidactic character led him to choose this life.
Simon wants the earth to speak in its purest and most poetic form. He spends his days exploring, picking and collecting clays, minerals and wood essences in the nearby woods. He then tests them, explores their unique properties, and uses them to create his pieces. With a rigorous environmental ethic, he fires in wood and electric kilns that he builds and collects the wood to fire, constantly adjusting and improving them.
Simon Manoha's pieces show the power of the earth. Often anthropomorphic, sometimes recalling familiar forms, his art is like petrification. As if from primitive times, with mineral nuances and textures, his sculptures evoke the weight of time.
Simon first collects clays, stones and sand from the mountain around him to get a final clay that best expresses his environment. Then he works on natural glazes by crushing minerals from the mountain, making ash with all the indigenous plants and developing it together. He often fires in his self built wood kiln with collected dead wood. He works with full mass of clay that he hollows days after days. It allows him to shape with all his body in a minimum of movement through a state of emptiness of mind.
