Simon Manoha

Simon Manoha was born in Ardèche, France, in 1987.

After studying music, he moved to Paris to study contemporary philosophy. He then returned to one of his first passions: photography, which he continues to work on, like all his other disciplines. His uncle being a potter, through his childhood memories, he is reminded by the earth.

All his ideas find then a feasibility, a grip which was missing until then.
He decides as usual to learn by himself, and this from the beginning: the search for clays. Simon Manoha spends days looking for clays in nature. He collects them, tests them in his works and in the fire.
The materials he photographed finally find their legs, their reliefs, the clay takes shape from all his observations of tree trunks, rocks, human silhouettes and skins. Sculptor of the material, he is in permanent research of the tension, that of the volumes and the spirit.
"Clay as an expression of myself
His studio is next to an Anagama (traditional Japanese wood-fired kiln), clay sources and countless minerals used for his glazes. He is currently working on a new series "Décomposage".

"The sculpture as repetition slips between the awkwardness of an imprint left on the ground and the obsession with eternity. As for its difference, it is my trace, my stroke of estèque or my fingerprint on the clay, forever repeated / disseminated in a network of dissolution / solution of an identity that is created as much as it is. comes undone. You watch it growing, my footprint, so come closer and walk on it nothing to fear - I would come back. The hand will eventually grip the memories and sculpt the memories. In the meantime, let's play the blocks of clay: sometimes soft to allow the opening to the world which comes into us as if to keep its imprint. Sometimes hard to avoid a fatal deformation and to penetrate the beings which surround us - those whose intelligent softness will have an appetite for some cruelty. 
For it is in the depths of underground root systems, in the dark night of mystics that cruelty can be worked without limit. Don't be afraid to get your paws dirty a bit, and it sometimes smells like shit. But it's like after a good mud bath, we would come out all protruding with a small nose under the armpit: "Here, it is for you.". There where the silence of passions bursts everything, me you the world: you understand, it'is there that I live. But sometimes I go back up with one or two truffles under my arms: do you like it? " Simon.M