Née en 1940 à Athènes, Sophia
Vari vit et travaille à Pietrasanta, New York et Paris.
Après les expositions consacrées à l’artiste
en 1999 et 2002 à la galerie et, au printemps 2005, l’installation
de quinze sculptures monumentales en plein air autour de l’Eglise
Saint-Germain-des-Prés, PIECE UNIQUE présente les dernières
sculptures en bronze et en marbre réalisées par Sophia
Vari, ainsi qu’un bas-relief créé spécifiquement
pour PIECE UNIQUE, 4, rue Jacques-Callot. Dans cette œuvre en
deux dimensions, on retrouve les préoccupations volumétriques
de l’artiste et les formes géométriques les plus
apparentes de ses sculptures où, à travers la combinaison
d’éléments curvilignes et de plans, elle va jusqu’à synthétiser
les qualités expressives des formes en plans incurvés.
--------------
Born in 1940 in Athens. Lives and works in Pietrasanta
(Italy), New York and Paris. After the exhibitions devoted to the artist at the
gallery in 1999 and 2002 and the installation of fifteen outdoors
monumental sculptures
in the spring 2005 in Place Saint-Germain-des-Près, PIECE
UNIQUE will be showing the last marble and bronze sculptures made
by Sophia Vari, as well as a bas-relief created especially for the
space of PIECE UNIQUE 4, rue Jacques Callot. In this two-dimensional
work, one can find the artist’s evident volumetric concerns
and the geometrical forms of her sculptures in which, with the combination
of rounded elements and plane surfaces, she synthesizes the expressive
qualities of the curved planes.
At PIECE UNIQUE VARIATIONS, 26-28, rue Mazarine, will be shown sculptures
where the complementarity of the simple, harmonious lines and the
praise of light give voice to volumes increasing the movement or
the composition of the work.
This work slowly meditated, with a wide and subtle
breathing, leaves us with an impression of serenity and fullness,
in which the material’s
truth – whether bronze or marble – fits in with the deep
artist’s truth moved by her demands towards the emergence and
the clarification of forms, then, towards a polychrome and almost
timeless expression.
The simple and evocative, but very precise, choice
of the colors gives life to the work without crushing it neither
transforming it
into three-dimensional paintings. On the contrary, the use of the
pigments allows to increase the plane contrast and to redefine the
essential volumes, giving, at the same time, a personal touch to
every work by means of the color.These chromatic values assert a
graphic and elegant immediacy, they do not dominate but give to the
works an evocative tonality, «nostalgic» as Sophia Vari
says. They are a counterpoint to the glistening patina- finely shaded
from black to brown and green- of the sculpture. Patina that is a
receptacle sometimes softening and sometimes awaking the light.
Product of an elaborated rigour, the work of Sophia Vari, grown
at a crossroads of two cultures (Greek and Hungarian), appears sometimes
spectacular but never flashy.
|