An Invitation to a Motionless Journey with Marine de Soos

Île d’Yeu — Marine de Soos is exhibiting her bronze sculptures until August 17.
Meet a traveling artist who has chosen the island as her home port.

Interview

Why do you exhibit regularly on the Île d’Yeu?
My works are presented in prestigious venues such as PAD, the design fair in Paris where my studio is located; the Ernest Cognacq Museum on the Île de Ré; or BRAFA in Brussels. But I exhibit every three years on the island, where I have been staying for 40 years. I appreciate the quality of the contact, the closeness, which is a source of wonderful encounters. Collectors look forward to my new works. This year, out of around forty pieces exhibited, half have just come out of the studio. I also create monumental works on commission.

Where do you draw your inspiration from?
From memories of my travels. I spent part of my childhood in Africa. Asia is also part of my reference points. Inhabited by these experiences, I seek to transcend borders, in a kind of universality, with works at the crossroads of civilizations.

How do you manage to create sculptures of such finesse?
Attentive to detail, I retouch each and every one of them. Some are even cast in jewelry workshops. Sculpture is the result of a human chain. I am deeply admiring of these ancestral skills. Thus, with the chaser, we perform a four-handed ballet to carefully adjust each piece. Finally, I pay close attention to the patina of each work, so that it reveals its garment of light in a subtle and singular way. Between the creation of the figure, the mold, and the finishing touches, at least five months go by.

How does the public react to your works?
People often tell me that my sculptures are charged with emotion. Through the choice of postures, the interiority of the figures, the stillness of water, the force of the wind, I wish to take people on a kind of motionless journey. Thus, the Praise of Slowness invites us to savor time as it stretches out. Isn’t summer, more than ever, conducive to contemplation? Suspended in space and time, my works above all express a strong desire for harmony—a quest for serenity.

Until Sunday, August 17, daily from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., La Grâce des moments heureux, Marine de Soos exhibition, at the Maison des Quais, in Port-Joinville.

Marine de Soos is exhibiting her sculptures until August 17 in Port-Joinville.
PHOTO: © MANON DE SOOS