La Cage et celles de la Lune 2022

Sandra Chevrier created La Cage et celles de la Lune, and in it we see a single eye, intensely gazing, surrounded by a riot of colors and textures built up around the canvas's edge. The juxtaposition is immediately striking: a smooth, realistic eye set against a heavily textured, almost sculptural border. Chevrier's combination of precise portraiture with an expressionistic, abstract frame invites us to consider how meaning is constructed. The eye, rendered with care, serves as a focal point. However the thick impasto of blues, purples, and whites around it destabilizes any straightforward reading. These materials could signify the barriers or complexities of perception, a frame through which we view the subject. The use of such tactile materiality challenges our expectations of painting. It's not just an image; it's an object, a constructed reality. Chevrier's work here exists in the tension between representation and abstraction. It's a visual and tactile reminder that how we see and what we see are always mediated, never neutral.