artist/ POUSSIER
France
Gregory Poussier’s sculptures are poetical, in the narrative and emotional sense of the word. They personify his sensitivity and call upon our own sensitivity. Gregory is one of those people who marvels at the beauty of things : a landscape, a book, a story, a person, a work of art…When he encounters beauty time comes to halt, as he contemplates and savors it at length.
On one hand, this is what made him want to be an artist, and on the other, it is what he wishes to experience and share with us by means of his artworks : “Beauty is everywhere, yet we often sideline it without even seeing it. I want to help people become aware of it, to take the time to unwind in it and rediscover the desire to contemplate it once again.” In fact, this is the whole purpose of his “The Sublime-Doers” series, but I’ll get to that later.
His desire to sculpt arose at the age of 21, upon discovering the Cemetery of Staglieno while travelling to Genoa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monumental_Cemetery_of_Staglieno
He was awed by the emotions conveyed by the sculptures, and, more particularly, by the monumental marble sculptures. He spent hours contemplating each sculpture, one by one, taking note of the different styles and tales they told, like various hymns to life and to humanity.
The emotion was powerful and intense as he marveled at the vast beauty…”that day, I decided to immerse myself in sculpting”. He had just started working after having earned a degree in engineering, but decided to enroll in the Beaux-Arts school in Grenoble, concomitantly. He recalls : “when I told them that I wanted to start working marble right off bat, they first laughed and oriented me towards modelling so that I could grasp volumes and anatomy.” But Gregory Poussier is a determined individual. He enrolled in evening classes, working marble. Sculpting became a part of his life, slowly prevailing over all else. With great humility and readiness, he perfected his art with Masters in private ateliers in France and Italy ; ateliers in which he finally learned the different marble cutting techniques. He became more proficient in that domain, but also heightened his knowledge of portraits and anatomy. He began exploring other materials such as bronze, to which he quickly took a liking.
At the age of 30, although well established in his career life, he decided to invest more of his time to this art. He then set the goal of becoming a full-time sculptor within the next 10 years, which he acheived. Today, sculpting is predominant in his life, and he has since earned the recognition of galleries and collectors.
His universe ? Gregory Poussier’s early sculptures were inspired by what he read, either illustrating myths or famous figures, taken from our collective culture and gathered in a series named “Humanities” (Shakespeare’s “Mid Summernight’s Dream”, Julien Sorel and Madame de Reynal of Stendhal’s “The Red and the Black”, James Ellroy’s “The Black Dahlia” or Charles Baudelaire’s “Albatross”…), and numerous mythological characters, all imbued with the emotion Gregory had felt when discovering the sculptures in Genoa.
For 10 years now, Gregory has been putting his talent at the service of a series called “The Sublime-Doers”. With the aforementioned aspiration to make people aware of the beauty in this world and encourage them to marvel at the grandeur which surrounds them, by sculpting “invisible craftsmen that create what nature has most Sublime, for the sake of our amazement”. To name a few, Gregory has sculpted “The Cloud Illuminator”, “The Raindrop Chiseller”, “The Mist Blower”, “The Perfumer of Flowers”, like odes to the Beauty in this world …on the verge of mythology and fairytale characters, each sculpture depicts imaginary craftsman that reveal moments of eternity. Here lies one of the many characteristics of Gregory Poussier’s artworks: the “narrative”. They are “interpreted” depending on the way they “speak” to us ; each artwork originates from his will to move us, via the emotions he pervades in them and the stories he wishes they recount.
This is why he strayed from marble, and moved on to sculpting terracotta and bronze. Gregory wanted to take the figuration and anatomical skillfulness a step further, making his sculptures more detailed and emotionally-charged, by way of a tense and intense transposition of his models’ poses and gestures.
“This quest for verisimilitude is not an end in itself but rather a preliminary to counting a story. The expression of grace, the tension in the movement, a posture’s elegance is not possible if the onlooker is unsettled by incorrect or approximate details. I wanted to refine my research of poses and stances until a sublimated expression was attained. I can work a face, tirelessly, until a charming personality expressing a wide range of emotions arises.”
Gregory is an untiring worker in search of perfection, in regards to what he feels and wishes to convey to us. This explains the variation, or rather progression, of styles within his creations. Certain sculptures relate to the universe and codes of mythology, while others relate to enchanting fairies or contemporary dancers. Driven by the artist’s emotions and sincerity, this variation is often unconscious, as are his choice of colors and bronze patina, or the finishing touches of his terracotta sculptures. Despite these variations, like the scales of a musician, Gregory’s artistic DNA is very well present and recognizable. Aside from the narrative intention and the subject, his underlying poetical soul and his awe of the surrounding beauty guide his creations, for our own amazement.
The end result are these sculptures, made of grace and fantasy, which embellish our day-to-day reality and open our eyes to the beauty and the Sublime that surround us.
Over the past two years, this has caught the eye and sparked the interests of many collectors and has earned Gregory and his artworks a spot in prestigious galleries.
Undoubtedly, Gregory continues to progress very favorably, given his sincerity, humbleness and determination, and his perpetual self-questioning, striving to go further and deeper into what he is driven by : the World’s Beauty.
