SOFIA SILVA

Autobiographical in nature, Silva’s new paintings are deeply intertwined with her relation- ship to psychoanalysis. The daughter of two psychoanalysts, Silva has been immersed in the practice since childhood. For Silva, psychoanalysis has become a consistent interpretative lens that informs how she looks at the world. It is an unceasing gaze that alternates between an extreme tolerance of humanity, and an understanding of the intolerance that same humanity is able to enact. This analytic framework translates to an analytic approach to painting, in which images are deconstructed, and reconfigured in constellatory compositions.

Figurative details are dislocated within abstract landscapes, and collaged elements, often physically extracted and repurposed from her previous paintings, dot the surface of her works. Shaped by fields of negative space, Silva’s paintings initially present as fragmentary, though when brought together, they begin to form a deeply intimate narrative that spans two distinct phases of her psychoanalytic journey. Conceived as episodes representing specific moments in her life, Silva’s paintings move from the tensions of her youth, to the anxieties of adulthood, illness, nostalgia, and anger, forming distinct stations of a personal Via Crucis. Encouraging the viewer to immerse themselves freely with the origin and content of each work, detailed information sheets are available during the duration of the exhibition.

Writing on Silva’s work, Bice Curiger said: “Sofia Silva is a master of shifting perspectives, where forms hover on the brink of transformation, poised between opposing states. At first, we are reassured by the delicate, the intimate, the ethereal: a quiet counterpoint to osten- tatious gesture. Yet as we venture further into her universe, even these certainties dissolve, and we find ourselves holding our breath at the audacity of her grand-scale compositions, with their infinitely subtle tonalities and vast, uncharted voids. As Meret Oppenheim once wrote in a poem: ‘with an enormous little, much.’”

Courtesy Andrew Kreps Gallery.