Sofia Defino Leiby

Sofia Defino Leiby fuses painting, collage, and digital media, often incorporating found imagery and layered compositions to investigate consumer culture and the aesthetics of everyday life. By blending traditional painterly techniques with digital tools, she creates immersive scenes where the physical and virtual converge, inviting viewers to reconsider the constructed nature of contemporary visual experience. A central aspect of her approach is the use of deliberate distance and irony, which allows her to highlight the contradictions and overlooked material conditions of modern existence. By recontextualizing familiar images and objects, Leiby's compositions challenge viewers to reconsider their assumptions about daily life, visual culture, and the way meaning is generated through the interaction of image, object, and perception. Her work occupies a space between observation and critique, blending humor, critique, and subtle abstraction to reveal the absurdities embedded in contemporary environments. ...

Sweetwater is a contemporary art gallery based in Berlin, Germany, founded in 2018. The gallery works with a wide range of artists based both in Germany and abroad, with a focus on conceptual practices across media. In addition to a regular exhibition program in the gallery, Sweetwater also frequently participates in offsite projects and art fairs. The gallery currently represents ten artists. Sweetwater is a member of the International Galleries Alliance.