Pilevneli is pleased to present Johan Creten, the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery and his first in Istanbul since inaugurating the space eight years ago. The exhibition brings together recent and significant works that reflect Creten’s sustained engagement with themes of power, transformation, fragility, and the enduring tension between the intimate and the monumental.
At the heart of the exhibition stands a monumental model for the bronze sculpture The Dead Fly. Traditionally associated with both decay and renewal, the fly functions here as a complex memento mori. In Creten’s hands, the form evolves into an almost anthropomorphic reclining female figure, enriched with architectural references recalling historical domes and cupolas. The work becomes a meditation on mortality, metamorphosis, and the transitional nature of existence. Surrounding this central piece are works from the Glory series, which examine representations of power suspended between the secular and the sacred — a conceptual axis that has long been central to Creten’s practice.
In an adjoining gallery space, visitors encounter the most recent female torso from Creten’s renowned Odore di Femina series. Coated in a luminous red glaze with gold and platinum lustre, the sculpture embodies one of the most enduring themes of the artist’s oeuvre: the untouchability of the other. It evokes the mystery of scent, the vulnerability of nature, and the fragile distance between presence and desire, standing as one of the exhibition’s most radiant and poetic works.
Further spaces present several “library sculptures,” intimate works conceived for private environments yet monumental in presence. These models reference key works from Creten’s recent public sculptures and institutional installations, including The Herring — a powerful emblem of mere, mother, sea, fertility, and feminine strength — as well as the sensuous dynamism of the De Sprinkhaan (The Grasshopper), and works now held in
collections such as the Musee d’art Moderne de la ville de Paris, and the Museum of Fine Arts of Orleans.
Three films presented within the exhibition offer additional insight into Creten’s practice, revealing how his sculptures inhabit architectural, urban, and social contexts beyond the gallery. Through this constellation of works, the exhibition affirms Johan Creten’s position as a major sculptor whose practice continually explores the relationship between form and meaning, body and architecture, memory and material, the personal and the public.
