Marine de Soos, a moment of grace in Saint-Martin-de-Ré
BERTRAND DE SAINT VINCENT

THE BEAUTY of the gesture. That of a young flutist, walking, playing his instrument with carefree ease; of a fisherman, seated on stilts, watching for his catch above the water, legs dangling; of an adolescent, caught mid-run, leaning forward as he rolls a metal hoop ahead of him with the tip of his stick. Le Pousseur de lune, the caption reads. And what can be said of the Femme à l’enfant? In their simplicity, their joyful momentum, each of these attitudes—immemorial—expresses a truth, a depth. These beings do not pose; they are.

“Rendering the beauty of life”

Through eight sculptures presented in the majestic setting of the Hôtel de Clerjotte, a former 15th-century seigneurial residence in Saint-Martin-de-Ré, Marine de Soos establishes a climate of fleeting lightness amid the heaviness of the world. For more than twenty years, this tall, dark-haired woman with restless inner silences has pursued, through bronze, a body of work born of her exotic memories. Captured within an undisturbed nature, her elongated silhouettes from Ethiopia, Burma, or Indonesia possess the innocence of childhood. Suspended in space and time, seeming to emerge from the mist of a poetic reverie, their graceful forms radiate a feeling of elegance, fullness, and serenity.
“I wanted,” the artist comments, “to render the beauty of life, the grace of a moment.” Caught in their intimacy, absorbed in what they are doing, her solitary figures—large in scale—never weigh down the landscape. They extend it, inhabit it, enchant it. With a sensitivity one senses is skin-deep, an emotion she admits she “cannot work without,” Marine de Soos conveys a message of profoundly moving simplicity.

Marine de Soos, Ernest Cognacq Museum, Saint-Martin-de-Ré (17), until September 30.