Sophie Jouve
France
After years of working with glass, and its sudden fragility, Sophie has tried to find a pictorial technique that would allow her to explore the paradox of materiality and transparence as she reaches out for her own poetic vision of the world.
Her works are made on cotton paper, which gives them a particular texture, a softness akin to that of fabric. The colouring pigments - the inks, the golds, the silvers - play with light, to create shimmering and sometimes surprising shades.
Her purpose when she paints is to transform her energy, her crowding ideas, her gestures - in a way, everything that is within her - to give free rein to her imagination and materials. Paper absorbs water and colour, pigments merge; as with love, risks are gladly taken; new worlds emerge in unexpected marriages of colour.
Sophie´s photographs of ink issue from choices made, as she dives into flowing ephemeral matter, and tries out perspectives to find the most significant juxtaposition, the most meaningful framing. Her purpose is to stimulate quiet contemplation or joyful energy and to provide the means not to recognize specific places but to feel an affinity with all the things on earth.
Dream landscapes, interior spaces; the silent overflowing of liquids, or the violent spasms of the sun: they are an invitation for each of us to reshape the known world in original permutations and imagine likely spaces. And though they don’t exist, it’s important to believe they may.
