Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The beasts (owl) is a smoke-fired stoneware sculpture by the contemporary French artist Cécile Raynal. This sculpture depicts an owl perched calmly, with a watchful gaze.
This work was created as part of the sculptural installation Les bêtes (The beasts), featuring twelve animals gathered around a cephalophorous figure. The animals, all of a similar size, break the natural scale and adopt sometimes unreal postures, accentuating the enigmatic nature of the scene. The artist explains this installation with these words: “Hybrid beasts and creatures, peoples, mass-culture: wolf, hare, fox, raccoon, goat, donkey, crow, feline, badger, world-tree, birder. So many motifs, subjects, metaphorical presences. […] They embody other spirits, other imaginations, other ways of seeing, moving and being moved. The peoples of the beasts suffer us, deplore us, since always and everywhere, we fabulate them. They represent us, they duplicate us. […] So I model great silences between man and beast, envisaging possible alliances. The future is only possible in an alliance, a common field, an earthy and spiritual heart.”
The installation Les bêtes (The beasts) has been exhibited at Cécile Raynal’s solo show À la table des Dames (At the Ladies’ table), at Montivilliers Abbey in Normandy (2025). In this historic site, long home to women, nuns and abbesses, the sculptor has chosen to present works combining portraits of women and animals. Cécile Raynal’s sculptures do not seek to seduce, and can even sometimes appear disturbing. Rough, they bear the marks of a passage through matter, through trial, and yet they stand upright, alive. They conjure up a world in which the animal, feminine, instinctive or rebellious side is embraced as an essential force. In the restored Abbey, the exhibition retraces the last fifteen years of the French artist’s singular career (more information on the exhibition here).
Cécile Raynal’s work oscillates between her studio in Normandy and residencies in places on the fringes of society: prisons, hospitals, convents… In these places, she creates clay portraits based on the interactions with the people she meets. Back in the studio, the artist extends this approach by drawing on a vast repertoire of tales, myths and literary references, giving rise to sculptures of animals and hybrid creatures, half-human, half-animal. Thanks to the animal figures in her pieces, the artist promotes to the viewers’ eyes the common language and the interactions between beasts and man.
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The beasts (owl) is a smoke-fired stoneware sculpture by the contemporary French artist Cécile Raynal. This sculpture depicts an owl perched calmly, with a watchful gaze.
This work was created as part of the sculptural installation Les bêtes (The beasts), featuring twelve animals gathered around a cephalophorous figure. The animals, all of a similar size, break the natural scale and adopt sometimes unreal postures, accentuating the enigmatic nature of the scene. The artist explains this installation with these words: “Hybrid beasts and creatures, peoples, mass-culture: wolf, hare, fox, raccoon, goat, donkey, crow, feline, badger, world-tree, birder. So many motifs, subjects, metaphorical presences. […] They embody other spirits, other imaginations, other ways of seeing, moving and being moved. The peoples of the beasts suffer us, deplore us, since always and everywhere, we fabulate them. They represent us, they duplicate us. […] So I model great silences between man and beast, envisaging possible alliances. The future is only possible in an alliance, a common field, an earthy and spiritual heart.”
The installation Les bêtes (The beasts) has been exhibited at Cécile Raynal’s solo show À la table des Dames (At the Ladies’ table), at Montivilliers Abbey in Normandy (2025). In this historic site, long home to women, nuns and abbesses, the sculptor has chosen to present works combining portraits of women and animals. Cécile Raynal’s sculptures do not seek to seduce, and can even sometimes appear disturbing. Rough, they bear the marks of a passage through matter, through trial, and yet they stand upright, alive. They conjure up a world in which the animal, feminine, instinctive or rebellious side is embraced as an essential force. In the restored Abbey, the exhibition retraces the last fifteen years of the French artist’s singular career (more information on the exhibition here).
Cécile Raynal’s work oscillates between her studio in Normandy and residencies in places on the fringes of society: prisons, hospitals, convents… In these places, she creates clay portraits based on the interactions with the people she meets. Back in the studio, the artist extends this approach by drawing on a vast repertoire of tales, myths and literary references, giving rise to sculptures of animals and hybrid creatures, half-human, half-animal. Thanks to the animal figures in her pieces, the artist promotes to the viewers’ eyes the common language and the interactions between beasts and man.
👉 Artistics is a Paris-based contemporary art gallery which operates mainly online. We are a team of passionate professionals driven by the thrill to discover new talents and to share their art with you!
👁 Want to see more from Artistics?
Never miss a new studio visit! Subscribe here: bit.ly/3XkpSJb
Buy unique artworks on our website: bit.ly/3JovXP6
To receive our bimonthly newsletter, subscribe here: bit.ly/3qLvZdi
Follow us on Instagram: bit.ly/43RAWjB
Like us on Facebook: bit.ly/448ROSG
