Statement
Les mondes acidulés de Sofigael M.
Narrative Figuration • Surrealism • Symbolism
Rooted in narrative figuration, Sophie-Gaëlle Martin’s oil paintings, social critiques tinged with dark humor, are shaped by pop culture and the graphic codes of the 1970s-1980s.
Through surreal scenes of lightheartedness, the artist visualizes existential anxiety and depicts the liminal state, the suspended moment, and the unconscious that surround tragedies.
She captures the tipping point of intimate dramas or collective catastrophes, when reality cracks and the familiar world slips into an unknown dimension.
Pop Culture
A child of Generation X, Sofigael M. grew up during the height of the Disco, New Wave, and Punk movements, to the soundtrack of The Supremes, The Alan Parsons Project, Depeche Mode, Blondie, and David Bowie.
Her youth was shaped by reading speculative novels from the science fiction collection Présence du Futur, and by the imagery of the early films of Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, and Robert Zemeckis.
These musical, literary, and cinematic influences inform her compositions, marked by vivid and contrasting colors, characteristic of Pop culture and the design aesthetics of the 1970s and 1980s.
![La traversée du désert [American dream] • Sofigael M. 2025 • Huile sur lin](https://www.sofigael-m.art/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/La-traversee-du-desert-American-Dream-Sofigael-M-2025-1-scaled.webp)
Tangy worlds on the Edge
In her bittersweet graphic narratives, Sophie-Gaëlle Martin portrays disillusioned characters whose gazes are haunted by events one senses to be tragic.
Resilient, her heroines and heroes nonetheless always display, despite adversity, that indefinable touch of insolent and sexy “No Future” spirit of the late 20th century.
Existential Vertigo & Ends of Worlds
Our world is shattering; danger is here, catastrophe is imminent, tragedy is brewing. We are on the verge of slipping into the unknown.
“Nothing will ever be the same again.”
By confronting her characters with the collapse of the systemic or psychological structures that kept them in a certain state of alienation, Sophie-Gaëlle Martin probes the human psyche and its search for meaning.
She questions the notions of science, belief, and the irrational, exploring threshold states and liminal spaces, at the edge of reality, within the cognitive gray zone between projection and the perception of reality.
Extrasolar utopias
In the series Les Utopies extrasolaires, and the sub-series Nebula Bay, Sofigael M. explores dystopian universes shaped by science fiction and cosmology—a contemporary Twilight Zone, where exoticism is merely a deceptive backdrop concealing the catastrophe that is brewing.
Fractals under surreal constraints
Dans sa nouvelle série, les Fractals under surreal constraints, c’est le retour sur Terre, une Terre qui déraille, peuplée de personnages tourmentés.
Sophie-Gaëlle Martin explore la condition humaine et dépeint l’enfer existentiel de personnages au bord de la rupture, englués dans un quotidien répétitif et soumis à des contraintes absurdes.
Tormented and unstable acrobats, suspended between two worlds, these beings eventually cross the line and tip into an alternate reality.