ERWAN SOYER

 

Deeply inspired by the European Surrealist collages of the early 20th century, Erwan Soyer's collages are extraordinary works of art. Each piece is "one-of-a-kind" and entirely hand-made. Using recycled materials, pages from old books and vintage illustrations, Soyer crafts his collages into being using a scalpel and traditional bookbinding methods. Erwan learnt much of his technical collage technique from book-binding professionals, who taught him how to understand and handle paper textures and conserve collage effectively.

 

In his works, characters travel across dreamscapes and explore crackled, undulating paper mountains. A beautiful female morphs into the Eiffel Tower. A man travelling in a newspaper hot air balloon peers down at the tiny dots of people on a beach below with a telescope. Tiny soldiers stand to attention against a landscape of newspaper print and black and white war photography. Erwan’s imagination is limitless and the boundaries of his surreal dreamworld are endless.

 

Erwan’s collages have explored themes such as politics, history, mythology, "utopia", science-fiction and the exploration of dreams.  Aside from their intriguing and thought-provoking subject matter however, the collages are in themselves beautiful examinations of texture and surface.  Erwan enjoys exploring the three-dimensional effects of the medium itself and has recently started experimenting with folding paper to represent dense geological forms.

 

Erwan studied Literature, Art & Cinema at the Diderot University in Paris, before completing a Graphic Design course at the Ecole Supérieure Estienne in Paris. When not producing collages, Erwan works as an artistic director and freelance illustrator in Montpelier in the South of France.

 

Due to their refreshing singularity, Erwan’s collages have been commissioned internationally. He recently produced illustrations for the Munich Opera and a book cover for the publisher George Braziller in New York. One larger collage is currently on display at the “Shooting Star” luxury ranch in Wyoming and he produced a large-format triptych for the beautiful Alpina Gstaad Palace in Switzerland.