Sophie Reinhold: Why talk of love at a time like this?

Veils of color materializing in subtle mists, geometric grid patterns delicately inscribing themselves into the image, and figurative visual elements scattered across the canvas in a state of weightless suspension: Sophie Reinhold’s paintings combine contrasting ways of composition whose arrangement produces a harmonious whole and a contemplative atmosphere.

In her paintings the Berlin-based artist explores how the concepts of veiling, camouflage, and emptiness clash with those of presence, impact, and strong expression. Manifestations of these two effects determine each other. Without hiding or overlapping, without withdrawing from expression, its essence cannot be profoundly recognized and comprehended. It is a necessary concurrent counterweight that emerges in the process of Reinhold’s composition over a prolonged period, one that can ultimately be read in its condensed form. The care that went into accentuating the forces that are at odds with each other and into the harmonizing components is clearly visible in her oil and marble-dust paintings. Images are created layer by layer, many spots then sanded down again, achieving a depth and sublimity that directly affect viewers, causing them to pause and reflect.