SOPHIE CHIR

Self-taught artist painter, Sophie Chir lives and works in Paris.

The artist explores the intimate relation between music and color, because Sophie is synesthete (1) as famous painters, writers or musicians like Vassily Kandinsky, Vincent Van Gogh, Leoanard de Vinci, Georgia O'Keeffe, Joan Mitchell, David Hockney, Robert Delaunay, Charles Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, Vladimir Nabokov, Frederic Chopin, Franz Litz, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Pharrell Williams, Lady Gaga...

Sophie Chir's paintings are music, dance, but also a story, as they make us share the fascinating sensorial experience of the synesthesia "Sounds-Colors".

Her synesthesia "sound-colour" allowed her to develop a gestural writing, whose foundation is the chromatic and choreographic translation of one music.

By chance of a listening, a music challenges the artist, catches her and takes hold of her uncontrollably.
Then begins for the artist, the careful analysis of the structure of the musical piece, its harmonic construction and its musical essence.

During this period, which lasts days or even weeks, Sophie acquires a great knowledge and understanding of the music, and above all she integrates its colors.

We could say that this is the “structuring” part of her work.

Following this preparation phase, Sophie puts on her canvas - became a painter's palette - the colors of the music.

Then she puts the music and as an orchestra conductor taps in time to music with a knife or a conductor's baton the paints.

She transposes the character of the musical part, the shades and waits for the departures of some instruments.
With an innate sense of order, to reach the goal which is the interpretation of the score, the artist organizes the collision (2) of colors that create an infinity of colored details, reliefs and contrasts.

The repetitiveness of the pattern, quick and vigorous graphics, cheerful colours, material which explores the 3rd dimension characterize her work.

(1) Synesthesia is a rare neurological phenomenon which connects two senses. In Sophie's case, sounds are transformed into colors

(2) Sophie names her paintings "Colliding". This name is inspired by her technique. The artist also takes the opportunity to pay tribute to Jackson Pollock, by winking at his "Dripping"

Galerie Menouar - Paris, 2017

Galerie Menouar - Paris, 2017

Galerie Menouar - Paris, 2017

Galerie Menouar - Paris, 2017

Cobra Art Gallery - Amsterdam, 2017

Galerie Perahia - Paris, 2017

Galerie Perahia - Paris, 2017

Galerie Perahia - Paris, 2016

Galerie Perahia - Paris, 2016

Galerie Marciano Rivoli - Paris, 2014

Galerie Marciano Rivoli - Paris, 2014

Fidal Fiducie - Paris, 2017

Fidal Fiducie - Paris, 2017

Strasbourg, 2016

Strasbourg, 2016

PriceWaterHouseCoopers - Paris, 2017

Synesthete & Choreographer of Colour - 2015

Marion Zilio

Curator, art critic and cultural mediator

Doctor of aesthetics and science and technology in the arts

Sophie Chir works and lives in Paris.

Sophie Chir’s painting is akin to both lyrical abstraction, whose desire for pure expression and intuitive form she embraces, and informal art that gives complete freedom to unexpected collisions between colours and materials.

Her electrifying compositions, alternating thickly applied colour and areas of transparency, produce a sensorial experience that is both rhythmic and sensuous and which literally immerses us in the painting. Sophie draws this propensity for immersion from her ability to associate sounds and colours in an involuntary and automatic way: she is a synaesthete (1), like Wassily Kandinsky or Arthur Rimbaud, for instance. This rare neurological phenomenon connects two senses: here music—necessary to the artist’s creative process—is transformed into colour. This translation of sound into touches of colour is related to a mechanism that links a perceptive body to a reality that is then interpreted via a unique, multimodal form. Sophie Chir produces a richly colourful visual choreography that also reflects a heightened sensitivity to the way space is organised on canvas.

The Colliding series, for example, is made up of little piles of colour colliding to the sound of music, creating an “informal” aesthetic that veers towards abstraction. But unlike Pollock, her technique does not involve “dripping” the paint : it is whipped, beaten, or thrown with a knife to organise encounters between colours. Like a thrown ball, the paint flies, bounces, juxtaposes and superimposes itself, creating not only countless details but also areas of relief and contrast that produce different grounds and depths. Although the paint goes beyond the frame, the aim is not to cover the entire surface of the painting. On the contrary, Sophie is careful to leave areas of empty space, moving away from the notion of a motif or the flat repetitiveness of “all-over” painting. Her work reflects a desire to experiment with another dimension: the kind of weightlessness that can be sensed so powerfully in the Zero-G series (Zero Gravity). Made of Plexiglas panels hanging several centimetres away from the wall, these compositions seem to defy gravity, confusing us with their opacity and transparency, making us lose our way and absorbing us completely. Lines of force are embodied in a relationship between the material and the intangible, the visible and the invisible, substance and void.

By covering her paintings in smooth translucent resin, inspired by Chinese lacquering techniques, Sophie reactivates a certain aesthetic of fluids that is somewhat reminiscent of Japanese mannerism. Influenced by the world of the manga with its flashy colours, and more broadly by Oriental tradition with its carefully balanced compositions, her paintings are alive with abstract, potential energy. As in Japanese culture, stillness always expresses movement, a life force or a vital impetus. Emptiness inhabits substance and vice versa, while the almost mirror-like surface effects of her paintings trigger endless variations that catch the eye as it moves deeper into the work, awakening a feeling of serene plenitude. In this sense, her work seems closer to landscape painting than abstract art, although here we are witnessing an inner landscape.

(1) The term synaesthesia comes from the Greek syn (“with”, expressing union) and aesthesis (“sensation”).