SCULPTURE

Gesso Cocteau

Gesso Cocteau’s approach to bronze sculpture is deeply personal and expressive. She began making bronze as a way to reflect her own life’s journey, seeing each piece as a kind of personal journal that resolves or characterizes her experiences.   Her work often responds to specific events — whether to resolve a problem or to chronicle joy and despair — and frequently draws from the relationships she has experienced or observed.

Cocteau is motivated by the absolute truth of the body’s posture. She believes gestures are learned before language and that the non-verbal movement of the body never lies, making it an honest, instinctive form of communication. She sees an emotional equivalent to every physical gesture, and her sculptures convey a wide range of feelings — from lovers and musicians to angels and introspective figures.

Her sculptures are described as “social sculpture” with a universal narrative, capturing emotions and experiences that resonate across cultures. They are “faceless” in the sense that they focus on the non-verbal communication of the human spirit, leaving behind the shadows and residue of personal history.

In essence, Cocteau’s work is both intimate and expansive — a reflection of her inner life and a mirror to shared human emotions.

I began making bronze sculpture as a way to reflect my own life's journey.

There is always a correlation between my individual sculptures and what is happening in my life.

My work is like a personal journal, in a sense that the work resolves or characterizes my experiences. I have made sculptures to resolve a problem or to chronicle my joy and despair. Most evident in my work are relationships that I have experienced or observed. 

I am motivated by the absolute truth of the body's posture. Since gestures are, for the most part, learned before any type of language is acquired and the non-verbal movement of the body never lies, there is honesty to this instinctive physical vocabulary. 

I believe there is an emotional equivalent to every physical gesture of the flesh. My sculptures display bodies conveying their own range of feelings in the forms of lover, musicians, dancers, angels and bodies coded with expressions of introspection.

The language of my sculpture contains my thoughts, my reactions, my perceptions, and the way that I process my life. They are also shadows and left over residue of a time in my own personal history. I think of my sculpture as 'social sculpture' with a universal narrative, emotions we all have in common.

My sculptures are the faceless nature of non-verbal communication reflecting the human spirit...