Visual artist Sandra Strele Follow.Art Card
Artworks
My vibe
In painting strict lines blur and the blurred ones can become strict. It may be an illusion, but it can feel so real that it becomes true.
About me
I explore forms of expanded painting through large-scale painting series based on traditional representative painting medium in which plots, motifs, and characters evolve and transform, creating an ongoing narrative that feels both infinite and intimate. I refer to this approach as seriality—a dynamic where familiar images are recontextualized to spark new meanings and interpretations. However, painting is a slow observation, in which the events take place somewhere between the frames of the paintings.
For example, in one series, I depict a house, a tennis court, or a swimming pool as mundane spaces. In the next, these spaces are overtaken by overgrowth. What has happened in the imaginary time between these two paintings? The viewer is presented with two distinct temporal moments, but the events in between remain hidden.
An eclectic cast of characters—trampolines, primordial plants, garden gnomes, secret watchers—continue to interact across different landscapes, fictional buildings, swimming pools, and seas. Each one poses a question: What lies hidden behind the thickets? Who is the observer, and who is observed? What secrets linger in the splash of a pool? What stories do the nostalgic garden gnomes whisper?
In the most recent works, I delve into the contemporary discourse of hydrofeminism, particularly in the context of ecological crisis. In new series, natural elements—such as mushrooms and water—engulf modern spaces like nine-story buildings, beaches, and tennis courts, suggesting the fragility of human constructions against the unstoppable forces of nature. Latest paintings also reflect on themes of motherhood, bringing a personal dimension to exploration of environmental and feminist thought.
The monumental scale of the paintings creates illusory impressions of different spaces, inviting the viewer to enter one of the subworlds to reach the next one and discover something new about the previous one.
It is a painting, a game, and life itself.
