Sonya Dziabas’s Otherworldly Feminine Icons

French artist Sonya Dziabas paints gripping and enigmatic images that mix nostalgic iconography and contemporary figures with seductive and mysterious results.

Her acrylic compositions, many of which incorporate collage elements that provoke startling variations in texture, generally feature either female figures or symbols of femininity. These characters float in indeterminate and abstract spaces dominated by bold hues applied in thick brushstrokes. The artist, who was born in Nice, cites influences like Modigliani and Dali, and it is not difficult to spot the impact of the former’s stylized portraiture and the latter’s surreal symbolism in her work.

Being largely a self-taught artist, other fields of artistic production have often influenced Dziabas as well, and her nods to cinema, theater and music are especially palpable in her very dramatic compositions. She presents her figures starkly against her alternately warm and icy non-figurative backdrops. Her subjects refer to film, fashion and popular iconography, but she transforms them according to her own highly evolved and unique aesthetic. Evocative subjects appear refreshed and transformed in Dziabas’s bewitching canvases.

Exhibition Dates: February 7, 2014 – February 27, 2014
Reception: Thursday, February 13, 2013, 6-8 pm
Gallery Location: 530 West 25th St, New York City
Gallery Hours: Tues – Sat, 11a.m. – 6 p.m.
Event URL: http://www.agora-gallery.com/artistpage/Sonya_Dziabas.aspx