Sylvie Selig

In drawings and paintings, Silvie Selig allows the raw material of her canvases to inspire her fantastical scenes of storytelling. In her Paris studio, Selig handles her untreated gossamer fabrics as both strips of unexposed film and translucent layers of skin. Her cinematic works unfold tales of the mythological dalliances of delicately rendered figures that also bear influences of classical and modernist sculpture. Human, animal, and humananimal hybrid worlds intimately intermingle, revealing unrequited loves, failed courtships, and myriad other liaisons with complications that allude to inscrutable underlying fables. Selig prominently uses the color red; it flows into her canvases to build fine capillaries of detail and make the bleeding heart gestures in her scenes pulse with emotional vulnerability.