Sofia Donovan: Selected works, 2018-2022

Sofia Donovan: Selected works, 2018-2022

Through my artistic work, I dedicate myself to exploring the duality between order and chaos, beauty and cruelty, as well as life and death. In my practice, I am interested in the passage of time, the constant mutability that characterizes living beings, and the moment when these transitional forms fade away in the irreversible process of dissolution.

I focus my attention on the representation of life and death, as well as on transformations, processes of deterioration, and the constant evolution that both nature and human beings go through. Therefore, my work is an investigation into the psychological interior of a temporary and biological body while simultaneously trying to capture the most primitive essence of human nature. One that is hidden behind layers of social conventions and the artifices that surround us.

In my artistic creation, I use manipulation and alteration techniques of objects and materials to generate tension between the original form and its subsequent transformation. The goal of my work is to capture how the residues of the past become symbols of transience, permanence, fall, loneliness, and how transformation processes generate deaths that in turn give rise to new forms of life in an abrupt and forceful way.

Elements of nature, from animals and plants to landscapes and atmospheric phenomena, are sources of inspiration for my work. I integrate them in an organic and integrated way to create works that incite deep reflection on the nature of existence and our own human condition.

Bomb series, 2022

The Bombs series leads me to think of the big bang, the first scream of a newborn world. What is the world that is being born? Why is it shaking and bursting and screaming? What are the metaphors for the exploding round shape and its splinters? Everything suggests convulsion, upheaval, shuddering and destruction: isn’t destruction a form of beginning?

The Ruins, 2018-2019

Ruins is a series that explores the fascination with the destructive potential of nature and time. It aims to confront the ideas of culture and memory with the organic and destructive. Symbols of transience, permanence and fall, of the interior of the human being, of loneliness.

Captions

• Agni, 2022, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, light bulb, 57x 54x 56 cm, ph: Jo Giese.
  Japanese Bomb, 2022, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, led light, 51x 40 x 35cm, ph: Jo Giese.
  Mercury, 2022, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, led light, 71x 55x 52 cm, ph: J. Velazquez
  Aflame, 2022, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, three light bulbs , 63 x 43 x 46 cm, ph: J. Velazquez
  Gift bomb, 2022, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, led light, 62x 50 x 50 cm, ph: Jo Giese
  Nature on fire,2022, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, light bulb, lampshade, 43x 44 x 45 cm, ph: Jo Giese
  Bromelight, 2022, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, led lights ,43 x 55 x 55 cm, ph: J. Velazquez
  Three moments of a grenade, 2022, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, light bulb and lampshade ,51 x 40 x 40 cm, ph: J. Velazquez
  Joker, 2022, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, 50 x 34 x 39 cm, ph: Jo Giese
  Black Blaze, 2022, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, 32 x 27 x 30 cm, ph: Jo Giese
  Green Cyclone, 2022, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, 51 x 40 x 38 cm, ph: Jo Giese
  Japanese bomb, Gift bomb, Black blaze.
• Asleep dreams , 2019, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, 45 x 45 x 42 cm, ph: Jo Giese
  Land slide, 2019, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, 37 x 36 x 37 cm, ph: Jo Giese
  A ray of light, 2019, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, light bulb, 60 x 45 x 43 cm, ph: Jo Giese
  My father´s collapse, 2017, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, gold lustre, 40 x 40 x 30 cm, ph: A. Mardones.
  Red essence, 2019, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, 43 x 47 x 44 cm, ph: Jo Giese
  Vertical walk down, 2019, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, 59 x 45 x 48 cm, ph: Jo Giese
  Fragile you, everything, 2019, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, 36x 32 x 30 cm, ph: Jo Giese
  What is left unsaid, 2018, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, 30x 50 x 60 cm, ph: A.Mardones
  Moroccan ruins, 2019, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, 50x 40 x 26 cm, ph: Jo Giese
  Pink gladiator, 2019, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, 96x 60 x 50 cm, ph: Jo Giese
  Poisonous green,, 2019, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, 38x 56 x 57 cm, ph: Jo Giese
  Mothership, 2019, stoneware, glaze, cone 6, 18x 60 x 59 cm, ph: Jo Giese