"The Art We're Obsessed With" is a monthly series highlighting the artworks Artsy staff members can't stop thinking about, and why. From little-known artists our editors stumble across at local shows to artworks going viral on our platform, these are the artworks we're obsessed with this month.
Every year around this time, I make myself a summer moodboard, which is really just a jumble of phrases and images in my Notes app (sample entries: "ice cream for dinner," "the NYC ferry"). Vietnamese-born, Paris-based painter Sophie-Yen Bretez's Time is the seas' expanse Time, it is all in one And in its womb - The sun abundance (2024) makes a vibrant addition to my annual assemblage. I love the contrast of soft pastel color gradients with sharp lines; the way the stylish Poul Henningsen lamp in the foreground plays off the sunset behind it; the naked nonchalance and graphicness of Bretez's figures. Look closely, and the book on the table spills open to a passage from Rainer Maria Rilke, in which he writes of summer as a metaphor for periods of creative fertility-rewarding those who patiently endure the "storms of spring." This scene evokes the kind of leisure I'm after this season. Now, who's going to teach me how to play poker?
- Olivia Horn, Associate Managing Editor
