Fragile, luminous, and enduring, porcelain becomes a medium for rethinking plant life in the modern city in Alice Riehl’s Porcelain Florilegium, an installation of the artist’s large-scale porcelain wall murals inspired by botanical imagery drawn from medieval and Renaissance tapestries, French decorative arts, mythology, and sustained observation of plant life The exhibition marks the first major U.S. museum presentation of Riehl’s work and underscoring MAD’s commitment to contemporary craft and material innovation.
A Sèvres-trained porcelain artist, Riehl approaches flora not as ornament but as active subjects; foregrounding root systems, cycles of growth and decline, and the resilience of so-called pioneer plant species that flourish in inhospitable urban environments. In entering the artist’s florilegium—a term historically used to describe a curated collection of botanical images or texts—visitors will encounter a formal gathering of porcelain wall murals shaped by close looking, material process, and botanical study.
About the artist
Alice Riehl is a French artist whose monumental porcelain wall murals combine motifs drawn from French decorative arts, organic imagery, and contemporary thought. Her work occupies a liminal space between the natural and the constructed, transforming botanical and marine forms into sculptural compositions that unfold across architectural surfaces. Riehl began her training in porcelain at the French Ceramics Institute in Sèvres in 2003, where she developed a deep engagement with hand modeling as her primary method. Working directly with porcelain, a material prized for its softness, unpredictability, and capacity to reflect light, she embraces the subtle distortions that occur during firing. These shifts introduce complexity and vitality, allowing each work to retain a sense of movement and life while maintaining structural rigor.
In 2010, Riehl expanded her practice into large-scale mural installations, drawing inspiration from the monumental medieval tapestries found throughout Europe. Her porcelain surfaces function as hybrids of textile and sculpture: representational detail gives way to layered textures created by pressing lace and other delicate materials into soft clay. Through asymmetrical compositions and implied motion, Riehl constructs imagined panoramas in which flora, botanicals, and oceanic forms traverse expansive fields, oscillating between abstraction and recognition. Riehl’s work rewards both distance and close looking. While her amplified scale produces an immersive visual experience, intimate details—from subtle glaze variations to meticulously modeled forms—emerge upon closer inspection, fostering a sense of proximity and contemplation.
Riehl lives and works in Paris. Her work has been commissioned for prominent cultural, corporate, and retail settings, including the Chaumet flagship fine jewelry showroom on Place Vendôme in Paris and Château Dauzac in the Bordeaux region of France.
Alice Riehl, Timidité (2025). Photo: Courtesy of Todd Merrill Studio and the artist.
