Christine Soyez

Christine Soyez, born in Paris, graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, where she trained in drawing, graphic design, visual communication, and video animation.

Alongside her work as an independent creative graphic designer, she also developed a practice as a visual artist, primarily focused on painting.

For about ten years, she has dedicated herself entirely to this artistic practice. Her technique, painting with acrylic or gouache on wet paper, is rapid and gesture-driven.

The execution is done in thin layers, with little superimposition, and is carried out with immediacy and spontaneity. Balancing control and freedom, the result takes the form of an imprint, a trace of a flow, of an energy.

Her work is, in most cases, composed of the assembly of several painted elements, arranged according to the resonance created between them.

This assembly is structured in an orthogonal rhythm that echoes the vertical and horizontal limits of the conventional painting format. What happens along the median boundary where these juxtaposed elements meet, this boundary that frames the pictorial flow, is of particular interest to her.

The movements within the painted surface contrast with the rigor and tangibility of the vertical and horizontal markers of the assembly. At times, the shape of the artwork even exceeds the conventional rectangle.

Her work, originally rooted in figuration, has evolved toward greater abstraction. One may occasionally recognize figurative elements treated as objective fragments.

The question is not abstraction versus figuration. Instead, it concerns what remains of what escapes, what traces of movement persist in relation to the porous markers formed by edges and boundaries.

Nicolas de Staël once said: “Non-figurative tendencies do not exist,” and “A painter will always need, whether from near or far, the ever-changing source of inspiration that is the tangible world.”

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