Devotchka (masque), 2023

Irina Shark   Emerging artists

Born in 1982 in Leipzig, Germany.

Lives and works in Normandy, France.

Irina Shark was born in Germany to Russian parents, grew up in Ukraine and then in Russia. After graduating with a master's degree in linguistics in Paris, she lived and worked for a long time in Hong Kong, where she began sculpting. The artist then moved to Florence to work alongside other sculptors at the Studio Via Dei Conti, before settling in Normandy. A finalist in prestigious international competitions: Portrait Society of Sculptors in London, Figurativas at the Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona, she was awarded the Brugnon Prize by the Taylor Foundation in Paris in 2020. While working on her own creations, the artist currently undertakes commissions for the public and private sectors. She is represented by the Galerie L'oeil du Prince. Her representations are those of a world full of poetry, lyricism, and mystery, combining references that are both contemporary and traditional, realistic and poetic. Irina Shark's sculptures unfold with great virtuosity, offering a remarkable range of emotions. Frozen at the peak of a movement, the sculptures are captured in the emotion of a cry, the singularity of a face, the gesture of a suspended moment... Casting her sharp gaze on our world, her work reflects her interiority which attempts to understand and express the essence of things, to go "towards the truth"...