Quentin Garel – studio visit
Artists’ studios are really fascinating, being the places where the secret of “creative storm” is kept and where the man-artist reveals himself, not only through his tools, such as canvases, brushes, spatulas and chisels, but also books, catalogues, records, photographs and anything that reveals his interests and passions.
Sometimes the studio identifies with the artist’s home, other times it is a secluded refuge, rarely tied up and minimal, most often full of any kind of things, real accumulations like a “Wunderkammer”.
The deafening noise in sculptors’ workshops, the smell of turpentine in painters’ ateliers, music most of the times, but sometimes silence, absolute silence in photographers’ dark rooms. Either a large loft or a small atelier, in any case, the artist’s studio is an intimate and vital refuge, a special place where to find concentration and where to free creativity and communicate intimately with the artwork.
Quentin Garel’s studio is really overwhelming: it’s a former foundry in Upper Normandy, a space he shares with his father Philippe, artist and professor at the Academy of Rouen, from whom Quentin has certainly inherited the versatility and ability in using different techniques with surprising ease. Garel’s studio is a real workshop of creativity consisting of large lofts that allow him to work on very large works. A portion of his home in Paris is also an atelier, where he mostly creates sketches as studies of large sculptures and interesting drawings, appreciated by admirers of his work just as much as his sculptures. Quentin Garel’s work takes place not only in the intimacy of his studio in Paris or his atelier in Normandy, but also in foundries, real creative forges, verifying every single detail of the fusion with the casting technicians, as well as the finishing patina of his bronzes, which is a peculiar technique that makes his sculptures look undoubtedly outstanding.
