Sophie von Hellermann

Born 1975 in Munich (Germany), she lives and works in London.

Like other artists of her generation, Sophie von Hellermann draws freely on the history of painting and its progressively acquired freedoms to eke out her singular path. Painting allows her to once appropriate and absent herself form reality. Each painting made by Sophie von Hellermann is condensed around a story that is perfectly contained within the limits of the frame, but perforated from within. Empty spaces help make her works more evocative, giving them the power to absorb the gaze, and then to open the imaginary and the memory of sensation. The subjects of these works, which are essentially narrative, stand at the intersection of the personal and the collective history that nourishes her imaginary, although there is no clear-cut line separating the two. Swift execution and abundant output, a casual style, a constant mixing of the trivial and the grandiose – these are the methods she uses to transgress the rules of pictorial propriety.

The paintings shown at the Fondation espace écureuil were made during a two-week residency in Toulouse, and contain direct evocations of the city, as well as fictive characters from the books she was reading at the time.