In 1959, at the age of 23, Claudine Monchaussé moved to La Borne in the Berry region, a village that has been a centre for pottery since 12th century. An autodidact, she discovered her craft independently and has continued to produce her work in La Borne ever since. Her material of choice is clay, which she moulds and shapes before allowing the kiln and firing process to complete the work. From early silhouettes, she evolved towards more austere shapes shrouded in mystery and oscillating between spherical forms, symbols of fertility and protruding elements. For curator Joël Riff, “each work has its own address, a charge that emanates from it and which finds its own destination.” Claudine Monchaussé's work also attests to a kind of permanence, to a continuous transcendence that tends towards the sacred through its universality. Her sculptures have a way of imposing their presence, as if they were self-evident.

At La Verrière, a selection of around forty pieces attests to this interior quest. Claudine Monchaussé does not draw or sketch, but rather devises her forms as she shapes them in her studio. Each sculpture is thus the result of a process of emergence, one evoked by the title of this project: “Sourdre”, literally meaning “to spring" or "to surge", as a plant might from the earth. As this is only Claudine Monchaussé’s second solo exhibition and her first outside France, the title also alludes to the emergence of her work onto the art scene. “Sourdre” indeed marks a key moment of visibility for the ceramicist, whose work has long remained under the radar. 

Curator Joël Riff has brought together a group of artists alongside Claudine Monchaussé to enrich the public's experience of her work. Brussels-based artist Nicolas Bourthoumieux (b. 1985) presents sculptures that complement those at the heart of the exhibition. Two major women artists who have shaped the history of French sculpture, Marie Talbot (1814–1874) and Germaine Richier (1902–1959), are represented respectively by an emblematic piece and an engraving. Idols by the duo mountaincutters (formed in 2012) punctuate the space, while sculptor Damien Fragnon (b. 1987) contributes a text on the nature of mineral waters from the depths of the earth. Gathered beneath the skylight of La Verrière, each artist’s work may thus “spring forth”.