This book — created for Galerie Transit — was published in conjunction with a new series of bronzes, “Strange Fruit”, that Johan Creten realised in 2014–2015.

JOHAN CRETEN
“Strange Fruit”
Transit Gallery
Mechelen, Belgium
2015

One of the assistants of the New York art dealer Robert Miller was a young Mexican woman called Verónica Gonzales. She invited Johan Creten to the north of Mexico, where her uncle; a local senator; had a small foundation whose aim was to help local craftspeople. Johan Creten lived 7 months in the village of Villa de García outside of Monterrey, on the border of the desert. An adobe house, a basic studio with a small group of assistants… It is under these difficult circumstances that Johan Creten makes the first versions of the famous sculpture "Why Does Strange Fruit always look so Sweet ?". The work will later be shown in Arizona and Santa Fe. This small booklet published on the occasion of the show following his stay in the Villa García includes several poems written by Johan Creten.

“Why does Strange Fruit always look so Sweet?”, ed. 1/4, 1998-2008

“One evening, I sat beauty on my knees. And I found her bitter. – And I reviled her”

Arthur Rimbaud, “A Season in Hell”, 1873.

“Why does Strange Fruit always look so Sweet?”, ed. 1/2 AP, 2008

Colin Lemoine in “Strange Fruit”, 2015

“Few artists express in this way the metamorphoses, few dare articulate in this way what is shapeless, what is deformed. Johan Creten reminds us that ugliness is never indifferent to beauty. Putrefaction and disgrace can glisten, glitter with myriad coruscations; the decaying carcass and Elephant Man can equally enchant and dazzle. The fruit is all the more beautiful for being contaminated. And the Flemish artist puts himself forward, puts forward an idea: the forbidden fruit will rot. Everything changes, even Evil. Everything passes, even fever. Thus his genius for fixing the passage from one state to another, for seizing the casting of pleasure or the transformation of evil, for erecting metamorphic works, such as lava, lymph and sperm.”