Alain Mandon presents himself as a self-taught artist. First a painter, then a sculptor, he created his first sculpture seven years ago, inspired by his wife's breast cancer and her breast reconstruction journey. To help her accept her new body, he made a first bust by molding her body, wishing to reveal her beauty. This first success, both psychological for his wife and artistic, encouraged him to continue on this path.
Since then, Alain has devoted a large part of his work to creating sculpted busts representing body fragments. He starts with a plaster cast, which he uses to shape his sculptures by projecting molten metal. The artist works with the material in such a way as to give it an irregular effect, as if it had been eroded by time. This gives his works an almost antique look, like relics that have survived the centuries.
The work of Alain Mandon, imbued with profound sensitivity and technical mastery, invites us to contemplate the timeless beauty of human forms, transformed by trial and enhanced by art. His sculptures, both fragile and powerful, are moving testimonies of resilience and love.
Born in Paris in 1953, Sophie Verger discovered her artistic calling at a very early age. As a teenager, she attended the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the École Montparnasse 80, before enrolling at the École Nissim de Camondo, then the Beaux-Arts de Paris, where she followed the classical teaching of the Favrat studio. Her encounter with the sculptor Étienne Martin confirmed her path.
For more than thirty years, Sophie Verger has been creating a profoundly unique body of work, in which animals become messengers of human emotions, sometimes tender, sometimes mischievous, but always powerfully evocative. Her sculpted bestiary is part of a tradition that is both archaic and contemporary, with influences ranging from medieval statuary to modern expressionism.
Throughout her series – Zoomorphic Virgins, Shields, Exploded Eggs, and Rhinoceroses – her work explores metamorphosis, humour, fragility, instinct, and the symbolic heritage of the animal world. Since the 1990s, she has exhibited in France and abroad: in Paris (Galerie Colette Dubois, Galerie Got, Galerie Lise Cormery), Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and more recently in the United States. She has participated in numerous artistic events (MAC Paris, Lineart Gand, Sculptures et Jardins in Lille, etc.) and has had several museum exhibitions, notably at the Musée Pompon.
Her works feature in numerous public and private collections in Europe and North America, and are regularly acquired by municipalities and museums (Lille Natural History Museum, Val d'Oise Archaeological Museum, Berck Museum, Pompon Museum, etc.).
Sophie Verger presents a poetic and powerful universe, where animals, somewhere between fantasy and humanity, become a mirror of an inner world that is both archaic and universal.
Dans un intérieur pensé avec exigence, chaque détail compte. Les matières, les volumes, la lumière… mais rien n’égale la présence d’une œuvre d’art.
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