M HKA Ensembles

° 1974

Works in Ghent (BE), lives in Ghent (BE).

Sofie Muller (°1974) studies painting at the Royal Academy in Antwerp, followed by sculpture, graphics and 3-D design at the Sint-Lucas Institute in Ghent.

Her oeuvre presents an unbiased view and a gift for creating images that, despite their simplicity, show a striking depth. The characters she creates, on paper,  sculpted or cast, express a broad scale of human emotions. Fear, sadness, desire or constriction. Muller shows the insufficiency of life, but also the comforts of memory.

The naïve honesty with which she faces these emotions head on, shows an individuality that the artist appropriated early on. No matter how much she experiments with externalising human suffering, her work always remains heart-warming, with a special sense of empathy and intimacy. Many of her characters share an inner pain, a human defect or an indivisible scar.

Muller consciously searches for ‘injured’ pieces of material with ‘mistakes’ or a natural erosion. This in part is why her mental portraits do not show any recognisable stereotypes, quite to the contrary. Each character, and even each separate part of the body, speaks of an individuality that is uniquely recognisable and can be universal, precisely for that reason. The works bear witness to youth, a dream, an illusion in relation to a defect. You perceive it immediately, at first sight, something is off, but it's not irreconcilable. Sofie Muller covers all sorrow with the cloak of love.