Sophie von Hellermann

Office Baroque is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition of Sophie von Hellermann at our midtown gallery on Ravensteinstraat 44 Rue Ravenstein.

Primarily using painting, von Hellermann creates works from memory rather than photographs. Her technique involves applying washes of diluted acrylic paint to often large-scale unprimed canvases in wide brush-strokes. She portrays her subjects with a lightness, blurring public fable with romantic vision. In von Hellermann’s works, personal narratives and fantasies are the product of desire and partial perceptions, bleeding into one another within her diaphanous figuration characterized by ambiguous moments and abstract spaces.

For her solo at Office Baroque, she took her cue from the name of the gallery. Baroque as the dominant artistic style of the 17th century has been a long term interest of Von Hellermann with its exaggerated motion and clear, explicit detail that produced drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in art and painting. The paintings made for the exhibition are based on the theme of angels — the paintings can be seen as portraits of different figures made of light — messengers, guardians who are rising, singing, falling, fighting, resting and announcing within an oneiric, sfumato setting.