Johan Creten's First Major Italian Retrospective at Villa Medici

Johan Creten's first major Italian retrospective, titled 'Peccati' (Sins), is on view at Villa Medici in Rome. The exhibition features over fifty works spanning thirty years, including ceramic sculptures, resins, bronzes, bas-reliefs, and installations. Creten, born in Sint Truiden in 1963 and based in Paris, was a fellow at the French Academy in Rome in 1996. The show includes pieces like 'The price of Freedom', 'Wargame Tondos', 'Couch Potatoes', 'Signs of Time', 'Muses et Meduses', 'Les Trois Trous', 'The Herring', 'Miroir', 'Plantstock', and 'Dutch Landscapes', alongside tapestries and rare prints from the artist's collection. A bronze bat sculpture was placed discreetly due to pandemic associations. The exhibition is curated by Colin Lemoine, who contributed a catalog essay emphasizing the works' focus on life, desire, pain, hope, lust, anger, love, and death rather than morality or censorship.