The original work of three French artists Love U Sev, Sophie Chemla and Marie Delabos will be on display at Agora Gallery, NYC.
About Love U Sev
The surreal portrait photography of French artist Love U Sev is both compelling and otherworldly. Love U Sev approaches her photographs in an entirely new way, superimposing her own self-portraits with portraits of American singer Michael Jackson, without retouching either image. The resulting picture is a figurative study in contrast and juxtaposition, as elements of each face emerge and recede to create a surrealistic and highly emotive effect that is almost abstract in its execution. The driving force behind Love U Sev’s art is a deep and abiding love. Indeed, these photographs were inspired by two intense dramas that occurred in the artist’s life: the death of Michael Jackson in 2009 and that of her husband in 2010. The emotional depth of the resulting images is nothing if not intense. And the truncation of the artist’s own face is both symbolic and deliberate, for as she explains “I am not whole any more… these photos are my heart slept on glazed paper.”
Love U Sev currently lives and works in Paris, France.
About Sophie Chemla
Sophie Chemla’s digital photography demands to be noticed, using a combination of boisterous colors, daring camera angles, and intriguing text. Chemla photographs uniquely urban sights at close, almost confrontational range, so that a metal safety gate is abstracted into a stunning Art Deco pattern or a row of concrete, industrial columns becomes monumental in scale. Her eye for overlooked detail is unerring – the work constantly demands that the viewer go outside and see their “ordinary” surroundings with better eyes. Chemla’s personal touch is to add a kind of digital graffiti over each image in strategic places. She puts a shocking-pink “LOVE IT” across a monochrome arcade, or parading across the famous façade of the Guggenheim museum. The words mirror the irrepressible energy of the city and celebrate the possibility of the unexpected, which is ever-present in urban life. Her latest series features the word “ARCANES.”
Sophie Chemla was born in Paris, France, and spent time living in New York before moving to her current home of Tel Aviv. She has exhibited in all three countries.
About Marie Delabos
As she celebrates the creative spirit, Marie Delabos creates art that vibrates with an energetic and atmospheric vitality, infusing her surfaces with layers of depth and detail and revealing a joyful simplicity within the color storm. A sense of freedom fills these abstractions, immersing viewers in the sheer richness of the paintings and sculptural works just as they are, without the pressures of formal categorization. Delabos’ “Bidules” series of sculptural paintings are presented “à-plat,” contrasting slickly vibrant hues and dynamic organic curves with the intriguingly varied natural forms of the tree trunks they are cut from. Working intuitively, the artist paints in acrylic on canvas or wood, occasionally incorporating elements of tissue paper and gold leaf as she playfully experiments with color and materials.
A novelist and avid photographer as well as an accomplished artist, Marie Delabos was born in Normandy, France and studied arts at the University of Picardie and clothing design at the National School of Decorative Arts in Paris. She later left Paris to begin a new life and artistic direction in a small village in the south of France.
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