Dappled Light and Hazy Shadows Characterize Clio Sze To’s Dynamic Paintings
Clio Sze To paints in the same way she walks around her home in Paris. Setting out with an open agenda and allowing her route to evolve organically, the artist meanders through the city with an eye toward the patterns and textures that comprise the landscape. When she returns to the studio, the sights transform into impressionistic pieces that capture the feeling of a contemplative hour spent on foot.
In her forthcoming solo exhibition Échos, Sze To presents a suite of oil paintings based on photos she captures on her walks, which become fodder for her stylized composites. Passersby appear in several scenes, although the changing seasons and time of day are a central focus for the artist. The shifting light of dusk, the hazy glow of street lamps, and the dance of shadows as the sun filters through a tree’s canopy are dynamic influences on the urban landscape.
Bulles, or bubbles, was the first title Sze To settled on for this body of work because of the way the thin, translucent membrane can capture and reflect light as a chromatic prism. “Échos, by contrast, implies an outside: something that travels outward, rebounds, and returns to us transformed, rather than a space sealed in upon itself,” a statement says.
Échos is on view from September 4 to October 10 at Crèvecœur in Paris. Find more from the artist on the gallery’s website.
