It’s one of the most exciting Parisian locations this fall. The Pill gallery, inaugurated in 2016 in Istanbul, is now located in Paris on the very elegant Place Valois, in the 1st arrondissement. We must therefore pass in front of the tourists, attracted by the euphoria ofEmily in Paris (there are the fictional offices of the character portrayed by Lily Collins on Netflix), and open the door to this new space, which is hosting for the occasion an exhibition dedicated to the French painter of Polish origin Apolonia Sokol. She is known for her figurative and feminist paintings; his latest works, shown at The Pill, do not stand out. From his commitment to oppressed peoples including Lebanon and Palestine to that of gender minorities such as trans people, his portraits continue to draw on scenes inspired by canonical works of art history and political issues. in an exhibition which borrows his name (I Shall Love Again When I’m Obsolete) to the African-American poet Audrey Lorde.
If we dare to go down one floor, we find the documentary Apolonia, Apolonia of Lea Globwhich followed Apolonia Sokol for thirteen years with his camera. A film unveiled this spring at the cinema and which traces the artist's journey, shaped from the Lavoir Moderne, his parents' Parisian theater, to his Fine Arts diploma, including his escapade in the United States and his residency at the Villa Medici. She captures her intimacy and her emotions, vividly, a sign that her heroine is perfectly at ease in front of the camera. And for good reason, Apolonia Sokol was filmed before he even saw the light of day: his parents' embraces, his conception, his mother's childbirth… His whole life is strangely preserved on video tapes. Enough to make you want to go and meet the artist, who welcomes us with his gallery owner, one rainy November evening.
Apolonia Sokol, Simone2024, Oil on canvas, 195 x 114 cm© Nicolai Bejder | Courtesy of the artist and THE PILL®
An aesthetic of friendship
“Oh I'm a real geek” jokes Apolonia Sokol after quoting yet another painter “that everyone has forgotten” by explaining the inspirations for his paintings, currently presented at The Pill gallery. Geek perhaps, legendary geek above all. It's his gallery owner, Suela J. Cennetwhich uses the adjective first. Trained at Sciences-Po Paris almost twenty years ago, she remembers it as a period during which she was “all the time stuffed into the Beaux-Arts”, right next to the Institute of Political Studies: “That's where I met Eva Nielsen, with whom I founded The Pill, and other pillar artists of the gallery like Mireille White. Quickly, a few years after their arrival at the Beaux-Arts, Apolonia arrived. I hadn't met her yet, so many people were talking to me about her.”. The painter knows very well how to say why: “It's because I painted all the time, I think”. From this period of lifeApolonia Sokolarchives have been preserved. Lots of archives. The documentary Apolonia, Apolonia of Lea Globbroadcast in the basement of The Pill gallery, sheds new light on his journey, punctuated by doubt (“How to be one of the best?” she asks on a beach in California) and the absolute desire to always paint (“It's painting above all for me”).
Strangely, however, the paintings ofApolonia Sokol had never before been fully dedicated to Paris, through an exhibition of the scale of ISLAWIO. The expression, acronym of the phrase “I shall love again when I’m obsolete” (in French: “I'll love again when I'm out of date”) comes from the poem Dreams Bite of Audrey Lordedated 1968, and offered to the painter by the artist Melody Lu – “a collection made by him, in stapled A4 sheets”. A poem which contains in its two stanzas all the questions explored by Sokol in his exhibition: the massacre of the innocents, called “the people of the sun”, whose blood stains the earth, facing the “winter people”. A polarization which resonates, for the artist, with the current situation, and which prevented her from painting for several months.
