Sofia LECONTE-MITEV

             Painter

Cities at night gallery

Cities at night

A city at night is the hidden side of the city in the day. What is invisible during the day reveals itself at night; conversely, everything that our gaze perceives during the day passes into the shadows at night. A city at night - whether we are inside it or looking down from a high point – is richer in information about the distribution of its activities and boundaries than a city during the day. In a paradoxical manner, it highlights and reveals.

Luc Gwiazdzinski, geographer and author of works observing the round-the-clock functioning of cities, said “Rid of its noises and encumbrances, a night-time city is a caricature of its daytime self.”

If this is true where activity is concerned, it is also valid for the vision that a city offers us at night.
My work deals generally with the presentation of a different vision.
DISCOVER. Learning to observe what we see but do not look at, or do not look at sufficiently; to discover these other realities.

Whereas the night occupies between 8 and 12 hours in a cycle of 24 hours, we like to contemplate it for five minutes from time to time and wonder at the beauty of its lights. During those few minutes, we are taken over by a feeling of peace and immobility. If, however, we devoted more time to this, we would see the lights twinkling, a diffuse activity, office districts deserted for the night, the daytime’s deserted districts filled with light. And we would finally discover a second world, within the first and a perfect foil to it.

In my paintings on the theme of the city at night, I sometimes use phosphorescent paint. Charged up for a few minutes in the light, it reinforces nocturnal life and enables the observers themselves to interact with their vision of the city by night, illuminating some areas more than others and for a longer or shorter time.