Isabelle Tanner has been invited by mudac and the Naturéum (Lausanne’s Museum of Natural Sciences) to put together an exhibition at Signal L. in the Plateforme 10 arts district. Ante ceramicum echoes the Spécimens 24 exhibition at Palais de Rumine and Lausanne’s Botanical Garden.

Geolo­gical time is incred­ibly slow, and yet new miner­als are being created all the time: fires in lignite and coal mines, or in the forests of Cali­for­nia, Canada, Siberia, Australia, or Bitsch in the Valais, are leav­ing deep scars…

Artist and ceram­ics tech­no­logy teacher Isabelle Tanner has been given carte blanche to exhibit at Signal L. Using split and fired stones or recom­posed segments of land, she invites us to compare wild rock and ceramic art. Meta­morph­ism and issues relat­ing to global warm­ing are at the heart of this work, which is based on the artist’s wide-ranging research and her concerns.

Isabelle Tanner currently lives and works in Lausanne, where she set up her first studio in 1977. Before that, she trained for four years in the ceram­ics section of the Ecole des Arts Décor­at­ifs in Geneva, where she later taught ceramic tech­no­logy for several years. Between 2005 and 2018, she trav­elled abroad, visit­ing France, Italy, Belgium, Iran, Geor­gia, and Egypt, where she lived for a while. Tanner has won numer­ous artistic awards in compet­i­tions and at national and inter­na­tional exhib­i­tions.

Signal L in the Plate­forme 10 arts district gives artists the oppor­tun­ity to shed light on our part of the coun­try, the Canton of Vaud, each in their own way and in their own image. Several times a year, an artist is invited to come and take a cross-sectional look at an insti­tu­tion or event in the French-speak­ing part of the coun­try, in order to broaden and vary Plate­forme 10’s artistic scope, going beyond the fine arts, design, or photo­graphy.

(With the support of the Leen­aards Found­a­tion)