artist/ GROS

FRANCE

It’s been several years since we’ve featured the work of Etienne Gros, and in particular his smokes.
Because they fit so well with the theme we’ve chosen to highlight them.

Etienne Gros lives and works in the Paris region.
He graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, where he studied with Iscan, Olivier Debré and Vélickovic.
Etienne Gros was awarded the Grand Prix Azart in 2006.

It is the carbon deposit of a flame that gives “body” to what Etienne Gros calls “smoke”. He can use the flame of a candle or a kerosene lamp. In an unpredictable way, with extreme lightness and gentleness but also great fragility, shapes are deposited on the white sheet of paper.
No brushes, pencils or anything else resembling a painter’s accessories are used.
Etienne draws with the wisps of smoke and lets himself be amazed by the randomness that the flame suggests.
Then the magic happens, or not!
The mysterious is unfathomable, and some secrets never reveal themselves! In the fire of his workshop, like Aladdin, he unleashes the genies of his lamps, but he takes us far, far away, into an ancestral world.