AP Contemporary is delighted to present Sonya Suhariyan’s first solo show in Hong Kong. Sonya is an award winning illustrator whose work ranges from illustration and animation to photography and wearable. She has also successfully merged commercial design art with fine art. Her paintings are like intricate mosaic and are densely layered with more stories and details within. The colorful palettes and the narratives in her work reveal the influence of African and Eastern work. The title of the exhibition, ‘Touched: Faces & Masks’, refers to the state when the viewer interacts with the world depicted by Sonya in which familiar faces and objects often appear alongside fragmentary images. The total effect is not simply one of harmony or beauty, but the viewer is confronted with scenes in which various images are intertwined into a peaceful chaos. Being ‘touched’, reality and fantasy suddenly intermingle as in daydreams. It is not a world of secular abundance, but a dynamic realm with a psychological splash and depth.
In the exhibition, Sonya displays 12 recent paintings. Her work is full of emotions, beauty and femininity. Yet such ‘beauty’ does not negate emptiness, darkness or tragedy, it can be a means to accessing the reality. Sonya’s work indeed conveys a reality that can be tensely experiential for the viewer. Come to our exhibition and step into a dimension where reality clashes with fantasy – where chaos becomes the only harmony.
About the Artist:
Sonya Suhariyan’s painting is full of emotion and passion. The world depicted by Sonya is a fancy place in which a definite subject often does not exist – it is a puzzle, kaleidoscope-like world of dreams. The images painted on canvas are concrete objects, such as human figures, plants, flowers and corners of streets. She represents the world around us that is full of feelings. Sonya studied architecture and art in the Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-don. She is also a stylist and fashion designer. She has wide publications in Moscow, London, Paris, Berlin and many other places. Work has been exhibited in Art Fair Tokyo, Art Copenhagen, Berliner Liste.
