Today we’d like to introduce you to Cyrielle Gulacsy.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Cyrielle. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.
I have always loved drawing for as long as I can remember. When I was a child becoming a painter was the only option that was possible in my mind, until people told me that it was not a real job and that I’d better find another idea. So by lack of encouragement and without even realizing it, I put aside my childhood dream and slowly turned to graphic design.
I studied visual communications in Paris, and I learned a lot, but I soon realized that it didn’t fascinate me. My passion for painting and drawing came back to life little by little. I started drawing again, and I participated in several contemporary art fairs, and my inspiration grew as I began to discover the world and travel by myself.
Did you remember any a remarkable event that influenced you or strengthened your vocation?
One day, I came across Stephen Hawking’s book “A Brief History of Time.” I opened it, and that was it! It was like a revelation. I think that there are two types of works of art: those that disconnect us from the world and put an end to the debate and those that open the field of possibilities, increase our curiosity and invite us to go look at the world more closely.
This book had that effect on me. I saw the world around me in a different light. For the first time, I wanted to express and share something. It totally changed the way I drew, what I drew, and why I drew. After graduating with a Masters in 2016, I started to work as Artistic Director, while saving to finance my first solo exhibition. After a little less than a year, I left my job to devote myself 100% to my art.
Since then, I’ve had exhibitions in Paris, New York and my solo exhibition Visible Light opens in Los Angeles on September 13th. Today, I do what I really want every day, and I know that there is nothing else I would like to do more than this.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I can’t complain. I have been really lucky, but I also think luck comes with a lot of work and tenacity. I always wondered if intuition really existed and what would happen if I followed it. So I tried and now waited to see what’s going to happen. It’s easy to forget that you can do almost anything if you are passionate and hard worker. You just have to keep that in mind.
When you do not feel strong enough or forget what you really want to do, you can easily fall asleep in a comfortable routine. It was very difficult for me to leave my job so quickly give up this safety net and jump into the void. But I knew that it was the only way to finally do what I wanted. I think we are forced to find solutions and do our best when we can’t go back.
We’d love to hear more about what you do.
What inspires me the most, I believe, is the invisible. I draw to capture, represent or crystallize something elusive, imperceptible. I have exclusively worked in black and white for a long time. In a rather instinctive way, it was a sort of learning step. Looking back, I think it was a way of focusing on the subject of my drawings. Then it became an aesthetic choice.
I like the ambiguity of chiaroscuro, the expressive charge of black and white. It allows me to sculpt the light and volumes in a more graphic way. I mostly do pointillism, and I think it is much more than a technique. It is both the form and the substance of my artistic research. It is a way of apprehending and transposing the reality of the physical world, consisting of an infinity of particles separated by space.
In my opinion, form and substance must be linked to constitute a work of art, and your imagination takes over and do the rest. The creative dimension of our mind is really interesting. Beyond our ability to store information and analyze it, we all have the ability to imagine, to create new things. This reverie is common to all human beings, I try to provoke this creative capacity in the viewer through my drawings.
What are your plans for the future? What are you looking forward to planning any big changes?
The very near future is the opening of my next exhibition Visible Light. Since my first trip to California, I have been fascinated by the atmosphere. Wherever you are, you are surrounded by a huge dome of light. It’s impossible to express this in words so trying to recreate this feeling is my way of sharing it.
I started studying the solar spectrum, how light changes during the day depending on its interaction with the atmosphere, and this brought me to working in color. This was a big change for me. This research about visible light also led me to observe the sun itself, and by extension, the other stars close to us. I want to continue my research and keep learning so that I can share a part of this knowledge through my work with experimentations and installations.
I want to create an experience, surprise and arouse a questioning in the viewer. It’s very ambitious, and I think I’m still far off the mark. I am only at the beginning of my research, and I am aware that the road is long. I will probably make many detours before I can create the human experience that I have in mind.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1515 N Gardner St Los Angeles
- Website: http://www.cyriellegulacsy.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cyrielle_gulacsy/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cyriellegulacsy/
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
