CLIO SZE TO

She lives and works in Pont de Sèvres, in Boulogne Billancourt, near Paris, a specific suburban district she depicts in her works of pastel on paper and watercolor on silk.

Clio Sze To depicts the environment she grew up and still lives; a concrete architectural ensemble on the edge of Paris, where you can watch dozens of apartments all around. Placed on the architectural border between austerity and futurism, such concrete megastructures seem worrying on her interpretation. Seeing what’s happening in other people’s places is entertaining, but also a little off-putting. Clio Sze To’s works are very silent. The two techniques she uses are, pastel on paper, known for its smoothness, and watercolour on silk, in which the strokes cannot be either totally clear or regular, produce a padded effect, which creates a slight disturbance below apparently calm landscapes. In each painting, there are effects of mistiness that break from radicality, with straight lines and repetitive geometrical shapes, while often odd wisps of smoke provide a feeling of imminent danger. Such foreboding is highlighted by the dizzying changes of scale that our gaze undergoes while passing from a window to the entirety of a building. Presences become ghostlier; door frames more impenetrable. From a neighbourhood doc-fiction, we move maybe into science-fiction, as in Blade Runner, highlighted by night scenes. Night scenes, from the dark, as described by the artist as the moment when you disappear, when the question of intimate and social time becomes different.

Recent exhibitions include Crèvecoeur, Paris (FR), Cocotte, Treignac (FR), Cité Internationale des Arts (FR), Kyoto City Art Centre (JP).

Courtesy Crèvecoeur