La Cage et le battement de Coeur 2020

Sandra Chevrier, born in 1983, made "La Cage et le battement de Coeur" with what looks like watercolor and collage. The effect is like watching a memory dissolve. Chevrier’s layered approach, mixing delicate washes of color with comic book fragments, feels very contemporary but also timeless, like art is just the latest layer in a long archeological dig. The watery marks around the figure’s face suggest a face struggling to emerge. Take a look at the way a comic book panel bursts through the surface of the skin. It's like the artist is asking: What is the relationship between our inner selves and the masks we wear? Are we all just superheroes in disguise? I'm reminded of Sigmar Polke and his use of printed fabrics. Chevrier uses images in a similar way, disrupting the surface and challenging our assumptions. Art, after all, is an open conversation about who we are and how we see.