Sophie Valance Cantor & Douglas Cantor: Achy Breaky Heart
"Achy Breaky Heart" gives us a glimpse into the lives of the artists, Sophie Vallance Cantor and Douglas Cantor and allows us to explore the intimacy of their artistic practice as an artistic duo.
Throughout the exhibition, Sophie visualizes and portrays her inner world to remedy the feeling of not fitting into the outside world. In this way, she flips the script because now it is not her observing the world from a distance anymore but her flourishing within her world. Douglas's visual language, however, shows fragments of himself, containing different subjects which echo his identity, personality and culture. The multi-layered works act as a reflection of life, without working with specific moments or feelings - they narrate a story without actually telling it.
Although each artist maintains their own artistic identity, aesthetic, and a very distinct pictorial programme, it is undeniable that there is a reciprocal influence that takes place within their paintings. Sophie and Douglas share their personal space as well as their atelier. One could argue in fact, that there is no real distinction between their professional and personal space since their existence as persons, painters, and couple is tangled.
This exhibition reflects just that, the bittersweet experiences of the artists' everyday lives. The good and the bad days; their desires and aspirations; the love and pain; the rejections and traumas, i.a. This is both a very personal and as well very universal theme which allows the viewer to submerge themselves into a journey of vivid imagery. From Sophie's expressive, almost caricaturesque and colourful portraits and self-portraits to Douglas' colonial premises where silhouettes of horses and naked female figures reside, one thing they both always have in common is that humour is always present within their work. It is a central factor in their oeuvre, which both artists express not only through the pictorial language but also through the titles of their works or the title of the exhibition itself, which often are inside jokes.
