Sophie Isaak’s WSC art exhibit ponders world’s paradoxical nature; exhibit opens Jan. 17

WAYNE — Visiting artist Sophie Isaak’s exhibit “The person I am on vacation” opens Wednesday, Jan. 17, at 4:30 p.m. in Wayne State College’s Nordstrand Visual Arts Gallery, located on the main level of U.S. Conn Library.

An artist lecture at 3:45 p.m. in Gardner Auditorium precedes the opening, and both events are free and open to the public. The exhibit runs through March 20.

Isaak’s complex compositions integrate print making, drawing, and painting. The exhibit capture’s life’s contradictions with intense colors, awkward contours, and unconventional pairings.

“I create wildly shifting plots through often very wrong-feeling color choices,” explains Isaak. “Color is my most prized tool to betray urgent emotions. Interest in mood, emotion, and chaos arose from my attempts to understand the paradoxical nature of the world.

“How is it possible that I can love and hate the same thing simultaneously?” she continues. “How can I be so good and so bad? Why do I want something and then try to tear it apart? I harness forces of good and evil, beauty and repulsiveness, happiness and sadness, attraction and repulsion to convey tumultuous scenes in the world. By pushing opposite elements next to each other, I hope to reveal how disparate energies cohabit the same plane. These disruptions are meant to take the work to an unpredictable conclusion while confounding the viewer.”