Sophie Varin creates miniature paintings, dreamlike renderings of encounters within hazy landscapes or sparse houses. The artist’s colour palette is bright and bold, with Varin often employing luscious greens and shades of deep red. The figures in her depictions are faceless and seen from a bird’s eye view, casting the viewer as voyeur, a panoptic presence perceiving everything below. Yet the figures remain enigmatic and curious, as if they have been placed in the landscapes, or found themselves there by accident. Much like in a dream, their purpose is unclear, and the viewer is forced to embrace the uncertainty rather than projecting meaning onto the forms.
Written by Goldsmiths CCA ...
Founded in 2010 by Guillaume Sultana, Sultana collaborates with emerging international artists. The gallery space operates as a site for experimentation and expression, often bringing together well-established and lesser known artists through a playful, yet politically-engaged curatorial program that highlights practices concerned with questions of identity and their social ramifications. By giving space to curators and writers, in addition to artists, the gallery is committed to rethinking the traditional modes of exhibition-making and collaboration within the art world. In 2021, Sultana opened Sultana Summer Set Arles to convene artists, collectors, curators, and friends close to the gallery in a domestic and intimate space in the heart of the city. This space was conceived as a residency and site of exchange, to host projects angled toward creative freedom, reflection, and flânerie that eschews a regular programming schedule, and is organized instead according to the whims and desires of our community. These two spaces exemplify the spirit of Sultana: the desire to provide artists with an independent platform for expression via site-specific projects and curatorial propositions. ...
