Sofi Van Saltbommel

Exhibition at BA&DF (Belgian Art and Design fair), 7- 10 October 2021

Reinhilde Van Grieken - Annouk Thys - Sofi Van Saltbommel

Exhibition Myths and Sensuality - January - April 2021

Sofi Van Saltbommel 

Sofi Van Saltbommel (° Brussels, 1973) studied ceramics and sculpture at the Royal Academy School of Arts in Ghent (1996) and the Academy for Fine Arts in Brussels. She is a versatile artist working with multiple techniques, but with a profound love for ceramics. The courses of ceramicist Thérèse Lebrun in Ixelles reinforced this feeling. The way of thinking of Pierre Caille, founder of the ceramic workshop in La Cambre is more or less present. Her work is mostly shown in Brussels, Wallonia and France, with a major exhibition held in 2019 in Keramis, La Louvière. Valcke Art Gallery is proud to present her work for the first time in Flanders.
Mixing materials is one of the characteristics of her work, together with the transformation of banal objects into objects carrying new values. Those transformations refer to the human body, the painful changes of the body in its real or fantasized hybridations (free after Ludovic Recchia, catalogue Keramis, 2019). It results in both sensual, sexual and disturbing sculptures. They are inhabitants of a world of grotesques, of myths and legends, referring to our fantasies and imagination. One likes them or is afraid. There is no in between, but they make one think and perhaps discover hidden dreams and desires in the depths of our personality. And in this sense they are not threatening.
Sofi has a very strong link with fashion, since her parents were fashion designers, what can be noticed in the “dresses” or “non-dresses” of her figurines.
Next to her statues Sofi tackles the decorative arts by creating bowls, in a rather intuitive way, letting the glaze crackle and adding resemblances of fruits and vegetables. In these works she pushes the boundaries of the normal perception of a bowl or utensil and places them in her own world of fantasy and form.