The Intellectual Greece of Sophia Vari at BABS Art Gallery

Opening on May 20, the exhibition sheds light on the Greek-born artist’s extraordinary sensitivity to form and color. Trained between France and the United States, Sophia Vari draws inspiration from Cycladic antiquity, the measured elegance of modernist proportions, and the poetic abstraction of Hans Arp and Joan Miró. The result is a visual lexicon that is both coherent and immediately recognizable. On show the celebrated jewel-sculptures, unique pieces fashioned from noble materials such as gold, silver, and marble, combined with organic elements like fine woods, leather, and, at times, precious or semi-precious stones. The creations radiate symbolic intensity, built upon the dialogue between material and proportion, between body and space. Archaic heritage and avant-garde vision find an original balance in these modernist compositions, echoing the votive statuary of the Cycladic isles. Greek mythology, an enduring wellspring for Vari, emerges in the evocative naming of her works. One example is Eosophoros, a golden brass bracelet that nods to the “light-bearing god,” designed to capture and refract light in luminous reverie. Alongside the jewelry, the exhibition includes a selection of watercolors on paper: vibrant abstract compositions that showcase Vari’s refined chromatic sensibility and her gift for suggesting movement within a two-dimensional plane. Completing the journey are bronze sculptures that explore the tension between solidity and grace, volumes that seem to revolve around themselves, evoking the gestures of dance and the equilibrium of classical architecture. An invitation to discover – or rediscover – an artist who gave abstraction a tangible presence, and endowed jewelry with a distinctly intellectual soul.