Home | Sophia Frese 1

BERLIN EXHIBIT

B E A S T I N T H E F O R E S T

Beast in the Forest explores the quantum paradox of Schrödinger’s Cat, rendering the canvas as a double-coded space: simultaneously a sanctuary and a trap. The titular 'Beast' exists in a superstate, both present (figuration) and absent (abstraction), its very existence determined by the viewer—the Observer. The painting’s light acts as this decisive factor, metaphorically representing the nuclear atom whose decay kills the subject. This tension forces the viewer to confront their own humanity, perpetually teetering between the impulse of the beast and the rationality of the human.

On view in Berlin in Gallery Z22 until 31st of January 2026

ELEMENTAL DRIFT

Raw Pigments, Oil, Pastels and Acrylics on Canvas (150 × 200 cm)

This work is a conceptual journey across a shifting, biomorphic landscape that blurred body and terrain. Using elemental blues and warm sienna, the painting creates a dynamic, living space that resists fixed orientation and invites immersive viewing. Made with oil, natural pigments, and enamel on canvas, the work was featured at The Factory LIC in Long Island City, NYC, as part of NYC Art Week, curated by Charles Moore.

ART
RESIDENCY
Casa Lü Sur / Mexico City

BLACK DOG

Raw Pigments, Oil and Acrylics on Canvas (200x170)

Abstraction is a portal to an adjacent realm, a whisper of another world, in flux and perpetually moving dialectically between the tangible and the ethereal, between Thanatos and Eros. There is ease and freedom to be had in this uprising.

BERTA SAVES HERSELF

Raw Pigments, Acrylics and Oil on Canvas (200x136)

In Berta Saves Herself, varying layers of blue unfold in a charged interplay between transparency and opacity, evoking a realm adjacent to language and perception. Frese captures the erotic tension that arises in the space where forms resist definition, hovering between visibility and dissolution. The work becomes an invocation of self-rescue — a passage through ambiguity toward self-assertion, where meaning flickers, elusive yet profoundly felt.

PSYCHOGRAPHIES

This body of work re-indexes contemporary landscape painting as a site of neurological mirroring. Here, horizons are flipped and the dualism between self and environment dissolves; the body does not merely observe the terrain but folds into it through a visceral, gestural alchemy. In an era of precarious, man-dominated ecospheres, this collapse of distance is a radical acknowledgment of sentience, a recognition of agency that exists far beyond narrow human perception.

Working with raw pigments on a monumental scale, I treat matter as an active participant rather than a passive resource. My practice is an attempt to land, to move away from the delusion of the detached observer and acknowledge ourselves as terrestrial beings entangled in a web of sovereign agency. These large-format canvases serve as a skin where the rhythms of the nervous system and the vibrations of an ensouled earth become indistinguishable.

GAMMA RAYS

Polyptych Installation

Raw Pigments, Oil, Acrylics and Fabric on Canvas

(6,80x3,30)

This Polyptych plays with the idea of fusing inner and outer states in the concept of gamma waves, measurable brain activity when we meditate, dream and die. The Polyptych riffs on the visuals of gamma waves, while bringing down the sky and turning the world upside down in a form of camouflage, playing on the dialectics of the human-nature divide.

In the studio at Uferhallen Berlin with FOLLY/MORIA

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FOLLY/MORIA

Oil, Raw Pigments, Pastels, Fabric and Acrylics on Canvas 175x360 (2022)

ROWING IN EDEN

Oil, Raw Pigments, Pastels and Acrylics on Canvas 200x149 (2024)

F I R S T

Oil, Raw Pigments, Pastels and Acrylics on Canvas 160x120 (2021)

HEMISPHERIC HOWL Oil, Raw Pigments, and Acrylics on Canvas 200x160 (2025)

S H I F T

Oil and Raw Pigments on Canvas 90x130 (2025)

R I S E Oil and Raw Pigments on Canvas 130x90 (2025)

M O D E L F O R B U I L D I N G A R O C K E T

Oil and Raw Pigments on Canvas 132x110 (2024)

BEASTS

In this cycle, the Beast is not a subject, but a Schnittstelle, a high-tension interface where the anatomical and the atmospheric dissolve. Held in a quantum superstate, these works refuse singular categorization, oscillating between the predatory and the sanctuary, the carnivorous and the tender.

Frese rejects the passivity of the background as a painterly tradition, replacing it with a field of Sovereign Materiality. The canvas is a sentient membrane where matter acts as an active participant. With a raw directness, the work establishes its own visual semantics, forcing a collapse of linear certainty. This non-linear, clamorous language renders the gestural mark as simultaneously an aggressive launch and an intimate embrace—an urgent acknowledgement of a sentience persisting far beyond narrow human perception.