Introducing Sandra Chérès

Sandra Cheres is of those artists unafraid to speak of their artwork, to tell their story.  

She soberly depicts her relationship with paper, whether it be newspapers, billboards…, of her passion for this material that has always fascinated her and has compelled her to create since her adolescence. She sees this material as a way of reconnecting with herself. The words written on it “mirror” her identity, and so does the material, originating from a tree with its roots anchored into the earth. The core of Sandra’s artworks is this rootedness. A deep-rooting from a childhood cradled by the cinematographic universe, entrenched within an era, a society. 

Directly linked to the New Realists, Sandra Cheres tears advertisement posters or gathers clippings from magazines, and reassembles them to her liking. What is the concept ? The need to “scratch off the surface to see what’s underneath, as you would with people” she says. Sandra, initially a cinematographic editor, loves to tell stories and create collages “like you would sequence footage for a film”. Taken from diverse chaotic elements, she gives a framework to her stories, she brings them structure. 

Cinema is important for this artist; it marked her youth. On canvas, she repositions faces, words, movie stars, clipped from the pages of Paris Match magazines of the 60s & 70s she has collected. Be that as it may be, Sandra’s pop artworks are more about strong role models and salient expressions than about movie icons and glitter. 

She creates her paintings with love and humor; two emotions she admits she can’t live without. She then protects them, one by one, with either wire mesh or fishnets stockings, a feminine material, by any standards, so thin yet so strong. 

She tells a story through salvaging; she recycles and gives a second life to objects, to the men and women present in her artworks. By putting new words in their mouths, she makes statements and creates new possibilities. Through her paintings, memories come to life and resonate within us, like testimonies ripped from palimpsests of billboards or compilations of tabloid memories. The paper brings both the material and the subject; the creative gesture, the poetry, the aesthetics. 

Art Traffik is proud to present to you artworks from different series that best illustrate Sandra Cheres’ work, which, without the shadow of a doubt, will seduce you and find a place in your homes, and in your hearts !