Gretel Weyer describes the invitation by the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg (MAMCS) to exhibit her work at La Grande Place, Musée Saint-Louis as an “inspiring challenge”. Trained as a ceramicist, she was particularly sensitive to this site where flames play a crucial role in the production of crystalware – a process that echoes her own practice of firing the clay she reshapes and transforms.

This affinity was further reinforced by the spatial configuration of La Grande Place itself. The alcoves, which display both the heritage collections of the Musée Saint-Louis and the works featured in temporary exhibitions, appeared to the artist as small theatres in which her creations could take centre stage.

This led Gretel Weyer to imagine her exhibition “Les Invités” as an unfolding of stories, wherein hybrid objects and animals emerge from the intimacy of the domestic to inhabit the spaces of La Grande Place. Freed from any traditional narrative, each ceramic ensemble becomes a diorama infused with a kind of magic. Although the artist's universe is reminiscent of fairy tales, she does not seek to tell any one story: her dreamlike worlds are universal enough to invite visitors to daydream amidst the fascinating surroundings of the exhibition rooms at the Musée Saint-Louis.

Born in Saverne in 1984, Gretel Weyer transforms simple, everyday objects into fantastical situations. With her ceramics, drawings and engravings, she creates forms at the intersection of literature and pictorial and cinematographic representations, challenging clichés surrounding the world of childhood and moving between re-enchantment and strangeness.