GALERIE EAST, STRASBOURG featuring SOPHIE KO
July 3 – August 30, 2025
Sophie KO
Manche freilich müssen drunten sterben // Some must die below, of course
Ganz vergessener Völker Müdigkeiten
Kann ich nicht abtun von meinen Lidern,
Noch weghalten von der erschrockenen Seele
Stummes Niederfallen ferne Sterne.
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Engraved into the wall of the EYES ONLY exhibition space, the title of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s poem becomes part of the installation of the same name. A “temporal geography” typical of Ko protrudes from the floor as a pointed fragment of an imaginary star. In dialogue with this is a small bronze sculpture, a simple sailboat consisting of leaves and bark. A timeless gesture to not only focus our gaze on the decay of our existence, but to resist the destructive forces of time with childlike curiosity.
Made with layers of pigments and ashes contained in large geometric frames, Sophie Ko’s Temporal Geographies appear as drawings of time that settle in a place, spatial images of the dialectical relationship we have with time. Fundamental, in this series of works, is the action of the force of gravity that, through imperceptible collapses and landslides of the matter, incessantly modifies the composition of the painting, marking the inexorable passage of time on the surface. Like an hourglass that slowly empties and accumulates sand at the bottom of the ampoule, the Temporal Geographies transfigure the irreversibility of time and, at the same time, the „taking shape“ of existence in its own flow. In this project, the fragment of a celestial body invites the observer to imagine reconstructing its integrity. Perhaps they are the remains of a stellar explosion, perhaps we are faced with the beginning of the creation of a star. The end of the life cycle of a star and, at the same time, its genesis. The third element of the exhibition, visible on the surface of the floor, is a bronze sculpture obtained by pairing a leaf with fragments of bark and thus transforming the first into a sail and the second into a hull. This simple boat is the result of an original and timeless gesture, like a child’s game, but in which the artistic work of the human being is recognized in embryo: his ability to know the world by transforming it, giving spiritual form to matter. Someone must certainly die down there is an invitation to look with wonder at that spark before everything around us becomes, once again, dark; it is an attempt to reorient our gaze towards time, thinking of it not only as the exhaustion of existence, but as the growth of life that resists the destructive forces of time.
After graduating from the Tbilisi and Brera Academies of Fine Arts, Sophie KO (*1981, Tiblisi) has exhibited at the Marino Marini Museum in Italy, as well as in France, Germany and Argentina. In 2016, she won the first prize of painting at the Lissone Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Alberto Zanchetta. She lives and works in Milano.