Sophie Nys
Slide, Slip, Glide
2023
Acrylic on unstretched canvas, white ash
66 x 75 cm
Edition of 20 copies numbered and signed by the artist, plus 3 Artist’s Proofs
Curated with Raphaël Pirenne
The title of this edition — Slide, Slip, Glide — refers to the polysemy at work in Sophie Nys’ art. Things cannot be designated by a single term; they slide, they slip, they glide between multiple designations. The project’s origin remains absent: an image where a “tongue” was once present, but which was perceived in the project’s development as an error, as a slip of the tongue.
The tongue is, in Sophie’s words, “the only naked muscle that can operate inside (private) and display itself outside (public) the body.” It instills an intimate disturbance in the public space in an iconic and often brazen way. Language slips in the game of translation. The polysemy is polymorphic. It becomes the glide of a drop of red color, like a glowing solar disk that drips towards the lower part of the keijiban, a disc subjected to an operation of suberu, at once a slip and a lapsus.
The “lapsus” is also chromatic. The tongues are the result of two passages of significantly different red colors: a carmine red “Crimson Glory” and a slightly brighter red “Pyrolle.” The slide from one red to the other makes history transit from one density to another, like a prophylactic color.
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth." (Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, 1955.)
Text by Raphaël Pirenne
Sophie Nys's exhibition took place at Keijiban from February 1 to March 14, 2023