Robin Penalva

Born in Marseille in 2000, Robin Penalva is a ceramic artist who graduated from HEAR in 2025, where he studied ceramic sculpture. He lives and works in the south of France.

For this residency, I want to develop a series of ceramic sculptures of different scales, inspired by the movements of marine life, but also by the abstraction of waves, rocks and plants. Forms that intertwine, stretch out or seem to emerge from the material, evoking living things as much as sea monsters or unknown organisms. With glazes and close attention to texture, I would like to recreate the variations of light underwater, the depths, the shifting reflections and the blur of marine horizons.

Recently, I have also been incorporating mother-of-pearl that I gather myself during my dives. This material carries an almost symbolic dimension: that of discovery, of the precious fragment found, the reward of exploration. A glint that reveals itself only when you take the time to look. Its integration into ceramics extends this idea of a quest, of a discreet treasure buried in the landscape.

Finally, I imagine these sculptures in dialogue with one another in the space, like a frozen image of apparitions. They would seem to keep a secret: that of what remains out of reach, beyond the shore. Through them, I want to evoke not so much the open sea itself as the inner movement it stirs up: the urge to look further, to tell what escapes the eye, to keep inventing forms in order to inhabit the unknown.