The body of work in Sophie Treppendahl’s Homebody was inspired by her experience of the last two years. After having her life confined indoors, Treppendahl found she had fallen in love with being at home.
Treppendahl’s interior scenes are not aspirational clickbait. Instead, they are expressions of gratitude for the lived-in house: the clutter of a bathroom sink, the detritus of a dinner party, the surprise of light coming in through a window. These are homes that hold the weight of accumulated hours, bright colors of major and minor joys. A novelty mallard duck planter nests alongside family photos, a plant’s curious tendrils spread in front of a busy floral wallpaper.
Treppendhal pays homage to the painters who have influenced her by capturing the visual reality of how she encounters their work—through afternoons spent browsing art books, amid charging cables and cans of seltzer, takeout food and trinkets. Seen this way, a strange convergence takes place between the artists and the surrounding objects. Nested inside the larger canvas, they combine into a domestic plane, and create a snapshot of a painter at work.
The groove a couch shows after the five hundredth morning of continuous weight, a mug left on a table that one promises to pick up later. The distance between ourselves and our surroundings has collapsed. As a result, the works on display in Homebody can be understood as a collection of self-portraits. Treppendahl paints homes that function like a body, spaces that have become reflections–or extensions–of the self.
Homebody will run concurrently with SPOOLS, a solo exhibition by Oakland-based artist Nimah Gobir from April 30 – June 18, 2022, with an artist reception on First Friday, May 6, 5-8pm. Johansson Projects is open Thu-Sat 1-5pm and by appointment.
For more information, please contact info@johanssonprojects.com / 510-999-9140
Sophie Treppendahl (b. 1991, St. Francisville, LA) is a painter based in New Orleans, LA. Sophie is from St. Francisville, a small town north of where she now lives. Sophie’s work explores the feeling of longing for something just out of reach. Many of her works are portraits of people she loves, her subjects often depicted by their homes and objects in lieu of their figure. She is interested in the conundrum of painting her world of people and things while working alone inside a studio. Recent solo shows include Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Larchmont, NY (2020), Indianapolis Art Center in Indianapolis, IN (2019) and Quirk Gallery in Richmond, VA (2018), and forthcoming (2022) with Johansson Projects in Oakland, CA. She has attended residencies at Golden Foundation (2020), The Wassaic Project in Wassaic NY (2019), 100 W Corsicana in Corsicana, TX (2019), and Untitled 1983 in Geneva, Switzerland (2020). Sophie received her BA in painting and printmaking at College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina.
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