La Cage, un silence musical 2022

Sandra Chevrier made this striking painting, ‘La Cage, un silence musical,’ using oil and collage to create a portrait that's both beautiful and a bit unsettling. The way she mixes comic book imagery with classical portraiture is really intriguing; it’s like a conversation between different worlds. I love the texture here; the smooth, almost airbrushed quality of the skin contrasts with the torn edges of the comic strips. There’s a tension between the permanent and the ephemeral. Look at the mouth, that huge grin with the tongue sticking out, it’s rendered so realistically, yet it's fragmented by these shards of pop culture. It reminds me a bit of David Salle's work, the way he layers images and ideas, creating a sense of fragmentation and complexity. But Chevrier brings a real sensitivity to her subject, exploring ideas about femininity, identity, and the masks we wear. Art like this doesn’t give you easy answers, it opens up a space for questioning, for thinking about how we see and are seen.