MAD GALLERY MILANO
Biennal of Art 2017 Artist: Sónia Travassos
Born in Coimbra, Portugal, 1984. J.D. in Law School, Coimbra University (FDUC, 2008) PhD in Psychology, Universitat Abat Oliba Ceu, Barcelona (2013) Master Degree in Clinical Psychology at the Institute for Applied Psychology (ISPA) Lisbon (2015) Sónia Travassos was a curious person about art and its expressions since her early years. As the law studies started, Sónia had to expand herself with a creative expression for her feelings about the society, saving her soul from the stiffness of the civil law procedure books, choosing to paint on all her free time. Later on, as a psychology student, Sónia found herself exploring the complexity of pain in relationships, inspiring herself to create a very original and colourful painting approach, translating feelings into canvas in a very intense way. Since then, Sónia is dedicated full time to painting, as her ultimate way to express the beauty of each inner self, exploding sensations trough a unique fauve-inspired style. Sónia is represented in private collections all around the world, and working intensively showing her work in collective and individual exhibitions.
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Critical review curated by: Deborah Maggiolo
Deborah Maggiolo Art Curator for MAD GALLERY MILANO Biennal of Art 2017
SÓNIA TRAVASSOS By entering in contact with Sónia’s works is it easy to understand how she feels art as a primary existential need, as could be eating, drinking or sleeping. From her art, in fact, it strongly emerges the urgency which she feels toward this creative activity that is painting, an intrinsic necessity to express an inner statement that pushes her from the depths of her bowels and to which she cannot help but obey. Though she prefers to affirm her own individuality, without inserting herself into any precise past or present art trend but, instead, setting out on an alternative path to what already exists, it is undeniable that in her production can be identified some suggestions and inspirations pertaining to the repertoire of art history. Surely, as one’s influenced by the experiences he makes, similarly one’s impressed by what he sees, feels or gets to know in his daily life; the same happens with Sónia, who treasures her life to then express it in the form of an artistic product, surely pursuing her own creativity and trying to stay independent from any preestablished reality. Such an approach is surely motivated by the need to create a space of autonomy to talk about herself, to give birth to a subjective art, a vehicle through which make her voice be heard. And her interiority could not speak to us any louder, driven by an incisive gesture and quite careless of the concept of “ideal beauty” as from any preconceived aesthetic canon. Certainly, all this clearly emerges while recognizing in Sónia’s style the traces of the French Fauve movement, as far as it concerns the highly accentuated use of bright and intense colour notes as a sentimental matter, even in an unrealistic mode – this is surely enough present in “PatPong to New York”, where warm and cold nuances mix up with an additional descriptive level consisting of a written text, as in the Graffiti art. Moreover, in Sónia’s art are equally notable traces of the Abstract Expressionist line, found in the tendency to create figures of a grotesque character and at times characterised by unreal and quite surrealistic details – as evident in “Eagle personification” or “El Benao”.
Deborah Maggiolo Art Curator for MAD GALLERY MILANO Biennal of Art 2017
PatPong to New York, acrylic on canvas, 180 x 120 cm
Deborah Maggiolo Art Curator for MAD GALLERY MILANO Biennal of Art 2017
Eagle personification, acrylic on canvas, 180 x 120 cm
Deborah Maggiolo Art Curator for MAD GALLERY MILANO Biennal of Art 2017
El Benao, acrylic on canvas, 160 x 110 cm
Deborah Maggiolo Art Curator for MAD GALLERY MILANO Biennal of Art 2017
If we could cite some artists who, at least visually, recall Sónia’s artistic mode, among these we must mention Jean-Michel Basquiat, with whom she shares the state of confusion and spontaneous accumulation of the visual elements of the composition as well as and the marked communicative aggression of the sign – identifiable in particular in the big red head similar to a skull located at the top right side of “Open a can of worms”. Furthermore, we could place her work near the experiments of the first Jackson Pollock – which still maintained a certain inclination to figuration – with whom she has in common the tendency to an individualistic painting and rich in pathos that follows the endless redefinition of its creator’s being. Both of these artists and, likewise, Sónia are finally united for having implemented a synthetic and elementary alphabet to approach an immediate narration which is not interested in using too many tinsels to communicate its message, as it is more concerned about keeping alive that real and genuine mood that generated it. Spontaneity and loyalty to self are the key words in Sónia’s work, which presents itself in a continuous remodelling state, a forever changing impulse that pays careful attention to the artist's different dispositions, thus taking on more or less marked connotations depending on her own feelings and using different shades of colour as well as brushstrokes of different design and materiality. Various layers of colour overlap to create a space that appears to be almost like the scene of a striking conflict, where each element struggles to assert itself over the others, to gain emphasis. Visual representation of a lively invisible intimacy, kingdom of heard emotions, perceived images or just imagined ones, Sónia’s art unfolds to the public in all its natural instinct, wanting to affirm its intrinsic strength on the white surface of the canvas, animating it of vital energy. The female figure recurs several times in Sónia’s artworks – for example in “Bellona” and in the aforementioned “Eagle personification” – this could be assumed as an interest of the artist to investigate on what it means to be a woman or, again, on how is a woman perceived in today’s society. This same interest with regards to woman is strongly present in Willem De Kooning's work, Abstract Expressionist painter who, obviously, could only offer an external view on the issue. Sónia’s production, therefore, mirrors her own becoming as a human being: reflecting her intimacy in a strong visual sense, each work acts as a diary page where to pin her own lived moments, her thoughts, her feelings. This peculiar path leads her to get better knowledge about herself, to give free vent to her subjectivity as well as to explore her full potential, pushing it to its limits without having to deal with too limiting aesthetic concerns. It’s a way of achieving a kind of purification through the outsourcing of an internal emotional intensity, making it a gift for the whole community; because yes, that of Sónia is a subjective kind of art but with a willing to speak to the public, to seek a dialogue with it and to reach the heart of the spectators by stimulating a reaction in them.
Deborah Maggiolo Art Curator for MAD GALLERY MILANO Biennal of Art 2017
Open a can of worms, acrylic on canvas, 180 x 120 cm
Deborah Maggiolo Art Curator for MAD GALLERY MILANO Biennal of Art 2017
Bellona, acrylic on canvas, 180 x 120 cm acrylic on canvas, 180 x 120 cm
Deborah Maggiolo Art Curator for MAD GALLERY MILANO Biennal of Art 2017