MARINE DE SOOS, SCULPTOR HONORED IN LYON
May 24, 2024

Written by Brigitte ROUSSEY and published on Overblog

If you are looking for a poetic universe where time seems suspended, quickly step through the doors of the Lyon gallery Michel Estades to discover a beautiful selection of bronze sculptures by the French artist Marine de Soos (1967). She invites her audience to travel into a distant, serene, and authentic world. From her youth spent in Africa and her many travels, she has retained memories of happy moments that she loved and now shares with emotion and sensitivity.

Born in Paris in 1967, after spending several years in Africa, she returned to the capital at the age of 18 to settle and work there. She initially moved within the world of marketing, which she abandoned after her meeting in 1991 with the American sculptor Jonathan Hirschfeld, who introduced her to sculpture. Enthused, she then decided to devote herself fully to it.

Nostalgic for Africa and the Orient, for the authenticity of men and women who preserve and pass on their ancestral values, she depicts a world rich in meaning and carrying messages. All the stories she tells are real or dreamed, and recomposed into very lively stagings.

The work of Marine de Soos as a sculptor consists of applying wax or clay—depending on the desired size of the work—onto a metal skeleton that she carefully constructs before beginning to sculpt the piece. She then calls upon different foundries, chosen according to the size of the work she has created. The artist always accompanies and checks on site each stage of the foundry’s work. Next comes the casting stage. A refractory plaster mold, heated, envelops the sculpture and receives the molten bronze poured at high temperature, which then takes the place of the wax: this is the lost-wax casting technique. The artist and the chaser finally retouch the piece before it receives its patina, most often dark, glossy, or matte.

The modeling of the sculptures is expressive, sometimes uneven, which animates them and allows the light to play across their surfaces. The figures are always represented in action and captured in the immediacy of their movements or postures: small Indonesian fishermen perched on stilts; Maasai herders with very gentle faces; mysterious Burmese women… and animals: elephant, ibis, monkey, or camel…
The exhibition brings together in the main hall more than sixty bronzes, accompanied by a few paintings on the theme of travel and escape, created by artists from the gallery. The atmosphere is calm and serene: L’Ombre d’être aimée – L’Arbre aux enfants – Baboune – La Vache sacrée – La Vie devant soi – Ibis sacré – Canique des péplums – Femme poisson… so many sculptures that immerse visitors in a universe often beyond our borders, poetic and charged with emotion.

The gentle, soothing sculptures of Marine de Soos bear witness to a world that is inexorably fading away. An exhibition not to be missed!

From May 25 to July 13, 2024
Brigitte Roussey