The painter Sophie von Hellermann is known for loosely rendered, fantastical scenes inspired by fables and mythologies. In a new series of images, currently on view at Pilar Corrias in London, her painterly apparitions feel like fragments of a dream, bathed in pale moonlight and beamed from outer space.
The show, “Moonage,” which runs through March 22, borrows its title from David Bowie’s song “Moonage Daydream,” which in 1971 heralded the debut of the character Ziggy Stardust, dreamed up to bring hope to Earth in the form of an androgynous, alien rock star, with a bright red mullet and glamorous lightning bolt bodysuits. He came to personify the ceaselessly inventive nature of Bowie’s vision, and his embrace of the otherworldly. Von Hellermann pays tribute in one of the show’s standout works, (2025).
Installation view of “Sophie von Hellermann: Moonage” at Pilar Corrias in London until March 22, 2025. Photography: Ben Westoby, courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London.
The new show at Pilar Corrias features not only the canvases for which von Hellermann is best known but also painted objects, textiles, and pieces of design. It is as though the German artist’s brush has run free, sweeping over neighboring curtains and lampshades until they too are covered in generous swathes of zestful color. A similar effect was achieved for the gallery’s standout solo booth of von Hellerman’s works at Frieze London in 2023, when blue, orange, and purple pigment spilled out onto the carpet, unleashing the paintings’ playful whimsy.
The lampshades, an unusual addition to the gallery space, add to the exhibition’s mystical, midnight hour feel, where our perception of the real fades into a reverie. The gallery describes how the device is intended to make the paintings “glint and flicker, like a large-scale magic lantern that scatters dreams across the gallery.”
Sophie von Hellermann, Moonage (2023). Image courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London.
Von Hellermann, who prefers not to over-explain her work, said only of the unique gallery space that “my hope was to create a dramatic installation that underlines the urgency in the paintings.”
The rest is left open to interpretation, as von Hellerman’s fluid application of pigment to build up painterly vignettes with just a light touch are an invitation to our imagination, or even our subconscious. Who is the mysterious couple in (2023), who seem to float on water while gazing up entranced at the full moon?
Sophie von Hellermann, Ziggy Stardust (2025). Image courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London.
What would it feel like to journey into another universe? Paradoxically, (2025) evokes both a bold voyage into the unknown and the safe comfort of an intimate embrace. In dreams, perhaps both are possible, as the rocket’s vibrating outline fades into the starry sky.
“The paintings are tinted with emotion,” von Hellermann hinted in an interview last summer. “It helps communicate emotions to make something more vivid or warmer.”
Sophie von Hellermann, One Night at the Carlyle (2024). Image courtesy the artist and Pilar Corrias, London.
In compositions that discard the strictures of traditional genre, faces melt into flower bouquets. This hallucinatory effect is achieved by von Hellermann’s preference for what she describes as “fast painting. I need to have an image quickly.” In doing so, she allows the strange and unexpected to emerge unimpeded from her paintbrush. But, how does she know when a composition is done?
“Successful paintings are those where it all comes together,” said von Hellermann. “The moment, the materials, the light, and the idea. I bring everything into play and then it works and is communicated on the canvas.”
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
