Discover the contemporary work of Sof

1969 / born in Talence, France

1987-1989 / Studied literature and history / Lycée Henri IV and Paris Sorbonne

1989 -1993 / Master's degree in economics, Paris Dauphine.

        Private lessons with Professor R. Leprince, ESAG Penninghen, Paris.

        Free auditor at ‚„Académie des Beaux Arts", Paris

1994 / Moves to Germany

1996 - 2001 / Birth of 4 children

1996 / Lives and works in Krefeld

2016 / Opening of the Atelier-Galerie Sof in Krefeld

Awards

2022 / Upcycling Prize, Berlin

2021 / Artistic Grant Transphère in collaboration with 2 French artists Live Painting, Jazz impro and Vijing, MKW, NRW

2021 / Upcycling Grant 2, MKW, NRW

2020 / Upcycling Grant 1, MKW, NRW

Exhibitions (since 2016)

2016:

Sparkasse Saarbrücken: financing of the catalogue „Sof... Tout court“ and l’ Sof workshop Krefeld

Heidefeld Gallery, Krefeld

KVNO, Kassenärztliche Vereinigung Nordrhein

2017 - 2018:

„Here we go!“ Hessing Stiftung, Augsburg

Verein Kultur Köln 30

Askitis, Düsseldorf

2019 - 2020:

Gallery D000, „ Sof at D000“, Krefeld

Hessing Stiftung, Augsburg

Il Sorriso, Krefeld

BC GmbH, Willich

"V'là "spring", Gründerzentrum, Willich

2021:

Die Brille, Krefeld

Brillenlager, Willich

BC GmbH, Willich

Kulturcamp e.v, Kampf-Lintfort

 

2022:

VKU Forum, Berlin

2023:
Schrirrhof, Kamp-Lintfort, VKU Forum, Berlin

2024:
30 years Galerie Heidefeld, „Horizonte“     Transphere au Silo, M&eac;reville, Frankreich

 

Permanent exhibitions

M&A Active, Düsseldorf

Wunschanwalt, Düsseldorf

Allcura Versicherung, München und Hamburg

Villa Medici, Krefeld

Leolux, Krefeld

Rehazentrum Come Back, Willich

Praxis Dr. Dieler, Krefeld

Active member

Malkasten, Düsseldorf

Kulturcamp e.v, Kampf-Lintfort

Kunst und Raum 21 e.V, Krefeld

Lions Club Barbarossa, Düsseldorf

Publications

2016 Catalog „Sof... Tout court!, Sparkasse Saarbrücken

2014 „100 Künstler -100 Kacheln", Aachen

2013  MPK / MPK Collection Volume II

2012 Catalog "Tête-à-tête en têtes", Cabinet Bizouard, Frankreich

 

 

 

 

 

Permanent exhibitions (since 2016)

 

2016:

Sparkasse Saarbrücken: financing of the catalog „Sof... Tout court“ and the’ Sof workshop Krefeld

Heidefeld Gallery, Krefeld

KVNO, Kassenärztliche Vereinigung Nordrhein

 

2017 - 2018:

„Here we go!“ Hessing Stiftung, Augsburg

Verein Kultur Köln 30

Askitis, Düsseldorf

 

2019 - 2020:

Gallery D000, „ Sof at D000“, Krefeld

Hessing Stiftung, Augsburg

Il Sorriso, Krefeld

BC GmbH, Willich

"V'là "spring", Gründerzentrum, Willich

 

2021:

Die Brille, Krefeld

Brillenlager, Willich

BC GmbH, Willich

Kulturcamp e.v, Kampf-Lintfort

 

2022:

VKU Forum, Berlin

 

 

 

Exhibitions permanent

 

M&A Active, Düsseldorf

Wunschanwalt, Düsseldorf

Allcura Versicherung, München und Hamburg

Villa Medici, Krefeld

Leolux, Krefeld

Rehazentrum Come Back, Willich

Praxis Dr. Dieler, Krefeld

 

 

 

Member active

 

Malkasten, Düsseldorf

Kulturcamp e.v, Kampf-Lintfort

Kunst und Raum 21 e.V, Krefeld

Lions Club Barbarossa, Düsseldorf

 

 

 

Publications

 

2016 Catalogs „Sof... Tout court!, Sparkasse Saarbrücken

 

2014 „100 Künstler -100 Kacheln", Aachen

 

2013  MPK / MPK Collection Volume II

 

2012 Catalog "Tête-à-tête en têtes", Cabinet Bizouard, Frankreich

1969 /  born in Talence, France

 

1987-1989 / Literature and history studies / Lycée Henri IV and Paris Sorbonne

 

1989 -1993 / Master's degree in economics, Paris Dauphine.

        Private lessons with Professor R. Leprince, ESAG Penninghen, Paris.

        Auditor at ‚„Académie des Beaux Arts", Paris

 

1994 / Move to Germany

 

1996 - 2001 / Birth of 4 children

 

1996 /  Lives and works in Krefeld

 

2016 / Opening of the Atelier-Galerie Sof in Krefeld

 

 

Prize

 

2022 / Upcycling Prize, Berlin

 

2021 / Transphère Grant in collaboration with 2 French artists, MKW, NRW

 

2021 / Upcycling Grant 2, MKW, NRW

 

2020 / Upcycling Grant 1, MKW, NRW

 

 

Permanent exhibitions (since 2016)

 

2016:

Sparkasse Saarbrücken: financing of the catalog „Sof... Tout court“ and the’ Sof workshop Krefeld

Heidefeld Gallery, Krefeld

KVNO, Kassenärztliche Vereinigung Nordrhein

 

2017 - 2018:

„Here we go!“ Hessing Stiftung, Augsburg

Verein Kultur Köln 30

Askitis, Düsseldorf

 

2019 - 2020:

Gallery D000, „ Sof at D000“, Krefeld

Hessing Stiftung, Augsburg

Il Sorriso, Krefeld

BC GmbH, Willich

"V'là "spring", Gründerzentrum, Willich

 

2021:

Die Brille, Krefeld

Brillenlager, Willich

BC GmbH, Willich

Kulturcamp e.v, Kampf-Lintfort

 

2022:

VKU Forum, Berlin

 

 

 

Exhibitions permanent

 

M&A Active, Düsseldorf

Wunschanwalt, Düsseldorf

Allcura Versicherung, München und Hamburg

Villa Medici, Krefeld

Leolux, Krefeld

Rehazentrum Come Back, Willich

Praxis Dr. Dieler, Krefeld

 

 

 

Member active

 

Malkasten, Düsseldorf

Kulturcamp e.v, Kampf-Lintfort

Kunst und Raum 21 e.V, Krefeld

Lions Club Barbarossa, Düsseldorf

 

 

 

Publications

 

2016 Catalogs „Sof... Tout court!, Sparkasse Saarbrücken

 

2014 „100 Künstler -100 Kacheln", Aachen

 

2013  MPK / MPK Collection Volume II

 

2012 Catalog "Tête-à-tête en têtes", Cabinet Bizouard, Frankreich

1969 /  born in Talence, France

 

1987-1989 / Literature and history studies / Lycée Henri IV and Paris Sorbonne

 

1989 -1993 / Master's degree in economics, Paris Dauphine.

        Private lessons with Professor R. Leprince, ESAG Penninghen, Paris.

        Auditor at ‚„Académie des Beaux Arts", Paris

 

1994 / Move to Germany

 

1996 - 2001 / Birth of 4 children

 

1996 /  Lives and works in Krefeld

 

2016 / Opening of the Atelier-Galerie Sof in Krefeld

 

 

Prize

 

2022 / Upcycling Prize, Berlin

 

2021 / Transphère Grant in collaboration with 2 French artists, MKW, NRW

 

2021 / Upcycling Grant 2, MKW, NRW

 

2020 / Upcycling Grant 1, MKW, NRW

 

 

Permanent exhibitions (since 2016)

 

2016:

Sparkasse Saarbrücken: financing of the catalog „Sof... Tout court“ and the’ Sof workshop Krefeld

Heidefeld Gallery, Krefeld

KVNO, Kassenärztliche Vereinigung Nordrhein

 

2017 - 2018:

„Here we go!“ Hessing Stiftung, Augsburg

Verein Kultur Köln 30

Askitis, Düsseldorf

 

2019 - 2020:

Gallery D000, „ Sof at D000“, Krefeld

Hessing Stiftung, Augsburg

Il Sorriso, Krefeld

BC GmbH, Willich

"V'là "spring", Gründerzentrum, Willich

 

2021:

Die Brille, Krefeld

Brillenlager, Willich

BC GmbH, Willich

Kulturcamp e.v, Kampf-Lintfort

 

2022:

VKU Forum, Berlin

 

 

 

Exhibitions permanent

 

M&A Active, Düsseldorf

Wunschanwalt, Düsseldorf

Allcura Versicherung, München und Hamburg

Villa Medici, Krefeld

Leolux, Krefeld

Rehazentrum Come Back, Willich

Praxis Dr. Dieler, Krefeld

 

 

 

Member active

 

Malkasten, Düsseldorf

Kulturcamp e.v, Kampf-Lintfort

Kunst und Raum 21 e.V, Krefeld

Lions Club Barbarossa, Düsseldorf

 

 

 

Publications

 

2016 Catalogs „Sof... Tout court!, Sparkasse Saarbrücken

 

2014 „100 Künstler -100 Kacheln", Aachen

 

2013  MPK / MPK Collection Volume II

 

2012 Catalog "Tête-à-tête en têtes", Cabinet Bizouard, Frankreich

It is always difficult for me to describe my work as an artist.

When new clients visit my 400 m2 studio, the inevitable question arises: „How many are you exhibiting?“.

I have a hard time explaining to them the reason for this diversity. I am not looking for myself, but I hate the repetitive. There are the days with and the desperate ones, fruitful coincidences, a great angry streak sometimes brilliant. It's a form of illness to always want to create something new!

My workplace looks like a minefield, where I navigate between three large easels, the floor vaguely protected by giant cardboard boxes, themselves covered with other works in progress, of smaller formats. Tubes of paint, pigments, lacquers, sprays, brushes, rollers and spatulas are scattered in the middle or soaking in large buckets of water.

I am a happy and multitasking artist. Unable to stay still, I always work in parallel on several works, often in completely different styles.

Looking through my creations, I myself have trouble categorizing my work. Impressionist, expressionist, modern art, Pop-art, abstract... the definitions or boundaries are sometimes blurred! And how can I categorize or define my „returnable“ canvases?

I like bright colors on large formats, where I feel both free and fearful, seeing things in things, struggling to stop myself from seeing too much!

I also like working on small formats, crouching, letting white or black fluid acrylics flow on canvases with a colored background or on old music scores.

I also like collages, painting on wood or assembling pieces of colored paint palettes.

And then, there is Upcycling. This theme has always been there, without me knowing how to put a name to it. As a child, I already went through flea markets and always loved the Old, bearer of history. The trinkets, lamps, statuettes, books, magazines and old engravings already decorated the walls of my room. Added to them were old furniture, chairs, heavy wooden frames, old agricultural tools, ladders...

I like to laugh, humor and rejoice with joy in throwing my wet brush, when I say to myself „Finished!“

It is wonderful to know that one will never be finished, neither learning nor discovering

 

THE PAINTER SOF: SOPHIE VOIGT-CHADEYRON

OR VIRTUOSITY IN COLOR

Galerie Heidefeld & Partner

Sophie Voigt-Chadeyron is a girl convinced of artistic freedom. She follows her own path - and takes the sovereign freedom to take the most diverse directions on this path and to leave multiple traces. These are the traces of her forms of expression realized with virtuosity : Sophie Voigt-Chadeyron, who works under her artist name Sof, surprises with the thematic breadth and pictorial polyphony of her work. But in Sof's universe, the common denominator of her pictorial language is her vibrant passion for color.

Man and his existence

These are in some way the colors of life and in particular of the joy of living and an affirmation of life that she wants to express, while remaining perfectly aware of the dark sides of existence. Thus, her painting focuses above all on one subject: "My main theme is and remains the human being," she says. And this human being sometimes has the astonishing ability to "sneak" beyond the true intentions of the painter. Sof: "Even when I don't absolutely want to see it, it always appears on my paintings, as if by chance. I force myself and often try to forget it. One of my techniques is then to simply turn the canvas over... "

How does this happen? An example: Sof draws a landscape in sparkling colors, which shows to what extent his painting knows - willingly - how to use stylistic figures of pointillism and impressionism in an expressive way. But the result, the pure play of colours, is not always enough for her. The painter then breaks up this painting with a rather impulsive composition: in the centre appears the white, naked figure of a completely abstract man. With this element, the artist deepens and completes the overall effect of her painting. Such pure white abstract figures appear in many of Sophie Voigt-Chadeyron's paintings. Their special feature is the minimalist narrowness of these figures, a narrowness that recalls the sculptures of Alberto Giacometti (although without their large, greatly oversized feet). Human silhouettes stand out from nature and the landscape.

 

"Humaine nature": the omnipresence of man.

Nature in general always plays a leading role in Sof's work.

"Pond" is a key term for an important source of inspiration for this Frenchwoman. Since childhood, she has loved Claude Monet's paintings, especially those depicting ponds and water lilies. Which establishes a direct line with her penchant for the frequent use of stylistic means related to impressionism. Sophie Voigt-Chadeyron is also interested in atmospheres, snapshots reflecting states of mind and spirituality, which she wants to make the viewer feel. Because her main subject remains man. "Clouds, trees, plants: since I was a child, nature in general has demanded human traits," she explains, describing a marked evolution. "Always and everywhere, I discover human faces and forms, even if I don't necessarily want to perceive them."

The nature in this artist's paintings is an animated nature. Thus, the attentive viewer can always discover anonymous faces and elements or allusions of human forms in her works. Sophie Voigt-Chadeyron has found for such images a term that she likes to use: "Humaine nature", human nature.

Virtuoso and versatile - also in her sculptural art.

"Sophie Voigt-Chadeyron is a contemporary artist with an expressive chromatic gesture, inventive refinement and exciting virtuosity", this is how the gallery owner Egon Heidefeld characterizes the painter, whose varied work has been represented for many years by the Heidefeld & Partner gallery. These include uniform and smooth compositions, works with a glazed paint application that use a new virtuoso and expressive pictorial language.

Her tireless creative force and the thematic breadth of her works do not extend to painting alone: Sof regularly devotes herself to upcycling work. She likes to use natural materials - for example branches, twigs, wood in general, old shop window mannequins, fabrics - and combines them with elements from the (everyday) world of technology. These compositions of objects and Sof's sculptures in general are varied configurations of a creative imagination that fascinates and often astonishes the viewer.

 

Eclecticism also characterizes her biography. Sophie Voigt-Chadeyron was born in 1969 in Caudrean, in the Médoc.

Henri IV and at the Sorbonne in Paris, then turned to business management; with a master's degree in economics. At the same time, Sof developed her artistic training: The French woman took private painting and drawing lessons with Professor Rémi Leprince and was a free auditor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris.