Charlotte Cornaton

Charlotte Cornaton, a multidisciplinary artist whose preferred medium is ceramics, stands out for an artistic practice that is both instinctive and intellectual. A sculptor, painter, photographer, videographer, and inquisitive mind eager for knowledge, she explores themes of memory, the passage of time, transformation, and renewal while questioning the constraints and damage inflicted on nature today. Her work addresses complex themes such as feminism, spirituality, and resilience, offering an introspective and cultural perspective on our era. 

 

Ceramics, the core medium of her work, is never a docile material for Charlotte Cornaton but rather a universal language for expressing fragility and transcendence. In her research on glazing, she merges her mastery of ancestral techniques with a fascinated curiosity for transformation. Embracing the unpredictable reactions of matter and valuing accidents, cracks, and tensions, she creates new textures and invents materials that oscillate between trompe-l’œil and raw revelation. Thus, in a poetics of imperfection, ceramics becomes the central medium of her exploration of time, questioning our perception of the moment and permanence, the ephemeral and the eternal.

 

Charlotte Cornaton’s universe is a visual metaphor of materials. A constant trompe-l’œil interplay between techniques weaves connections between the vegetal, the mineral, and the organic. Ceramics, along with oil painting on wood and photographic printing on metal, interact in a mise en abyme to capture and translate the passage of time. In her ‘Herbiers’ series, she paints over her photographs with oil pastels, creating a blur and abstraction inspired by Impressionist aesthetics.

 

Her reflection on natural cycles and nature’s power of resilience is also expressed in her ‘Monstera Deliciosa’ series—large tropical plants sculpted from porcelain stoneware glazed in copper green. The metallic sheen of this vegetal jungle testifies to their ability to adapt to the rigors of urban life, continuing their transformation from Rio de Janeiro to Hong Kong, at the cost of their symbiotic mutation. 

 

The passage of time and the spirit of resilience also manifest in her oil-on-wood self-portraits. From these paintings, sculptures emerge with a surrealist sensibility, their ceramic glazes meticulously crafted to echo the tonalities of the paintings. These self-portraits pay tribute to the women artists of the past—most of whom remain unknown, true ghosts of society from the Renaissance to the modern era. By depicting herself, Charlotte Cornaton asserts the dual status of women as both muse and artist, subject and author, in a reclamation of the feminine. 

 

Charlotte Cornaton was born in Paris in 1986. After training in ceramics at Central Saint Martins School in London under the mentorship of Anthony Quinn in 2008, she graduated as valedictorian from the École Supérieure d’Arts Graphiques Penninghen in Paris in 2009. She further deepened her knowledge of glaze chemistry at the École des Arts et Techniques Céramiques in Paris. Her artist residencies in emblematic locations—such as Jingdezhen in China, renowned for its ancestral porcelain, and EKWC in the Netherlands, a hub for avant-garde sculpture—were not merely technical milestones but initiatory journeys that enriched her exploration of materiality and cultural heritage.