Sofia Boubolis

Despite what some might think, the emerging art scene does not consist solely of hyperactive artists sampling every disciplines, mixing communication, art and marketing and flirting without scrupples with the dictatorship of the new. Some still strive to paint, to fill immaculate surfaces with pencil drawings and to satisfy a simple, yet singular need for self-expression. Once again, we might face the eternal debate between the ancients and the moderns, except that opting for tradition today goes along with a certain revolt against the ever¬-increasing complexity of our society. Sofia Boubolis seems to belong to this nostalgic trend. Seems, because these are only allegations; her humility forbids her from wishing to belong to anything at all. What remains are the altered, or rather patinated, dreams she produces using techniques such as drawing, painting and fresco. Sofia Boubolis fills her works with classical and romantic references: ruined monuments, luxuriant gardens, stuccoed fountains or grottoes, tapestries from a failed Italian hotel, photographs forgotten in an attic or postcards folded in four in a bag. Flirting with kitsch, but avoiding second-rate Italian restaurant style decoration, she manages to confer to her work a mysterious, dramatic and sometimes even morbid tone. Distortions appear here and there, as in the balcony of a classical villa which suddenly becomes a viscous thickening paint (Retour de Rome), or in the many sketches in homage to the works that have influenced her, from the Trevi fountain to Bambi, which she dilutes with solvent. Memory, impressions, dreams and history become a material as fluid as paint, and Sofia Boubolis, who seems to understand this well, uses this material to reinvent her modernity… or perhaps her own life?

David de Tscharner