In 2019, Johan Creten displayed some of his most impressive sculptures in the middle of a beautiful natural landscape in the heart of the Pilane sculpture park, on the island of Tjörn.
Tjörn Island
Sweden
2019
On this occasion, Johan Creten selected three monumental bronzes overlooking the Swedish fjords: "De Vleermuis - The Bat" (2014-2019), "De Gier - The Vulture" (2015-2017), and "The Price of Freedom" (2015-2016). He recreates his own universe, populated by gigantic birds. The artist has integrated in "The Bat" a staircase so that visitors can interact directly with his work.
An exhibition held in one of the ten best sculpture parks in Europe.
Pilane is nature’s own art gallery, eight hectares of cultivated land where visitors can roam freely under the open sky. Against the backdrop of the scenic Bohuslän archipelago, the art, the sea, the landscape, and the history of this place that goes back thousands of years, provide an exceptionnal location for Johan Creten's works. Sculpture in Pilane is a private, independent and non-commercial initiative run by Pilane Heritage Museum. Click on the link below to learn more about Pilane Sculpture Park : https://www.pilane.org/en/entre.php
The Works
A mysterious animal that lies between good and evil, the bat fascinates and intrigues. It plays a crucial role in our ecological system. That is why Johan Creten wanted that his work invite to be touched, tamed, mounted, photographed, shared... As if to better grasp it, to better understand it. It opens a time of exchange and sharing of the experience with others. The imprints left one by one by the visitors come to reveal progressively a new patina of the bronze, giving all its beauty to the work.
"De Gier" is a major work by Johan Creten from the so-called "Big Birds" series. Iconic and monumental, it is in the tradition of Pliny's Sorrow (2011), shown at the Middelheimmuseum in Antwerp in 2014, and it entered the permanent collection of the Red Star Line Museum in Antwerp in 2015. De Gier's monolithic or totemic appearance is also linked to the work "The Tempest" (2011), which was shown at the Dhondt-Dhaenens Museum in Deurle (Belgium) in 2012, at the CRAC in Sète for the exhibition "La Traversée" in 2016-2017 and is now part of a private collection in Belgium. "The Vulture" is an ambiguous work, heroically melancholic, full of power and authority. This monumental lost wax cast is part of a very limited edition of three copies, plus an artist's proof.
