Sofia Defino Leiby's 'Bathos' Exhibition at Sweetwater Berlin Explores Artistic Anticlimax

Sofia Defino Leiby's exhibition 'Bathos' at Sweetwater in Berlin runs from 6 June to 27 July 2024. The US-born, Berlin-based artist presents 11 small paintings, prints, and mixed-media works that employ bathos—a literary device of anticlimax—to comment on the unheroic, humdrum nature of artistic life. Works like 'Happier than Ever' (2024) feature oil streaks on antique linen, where the sagging surface reveals the stretcher's outline, creating a quietly comical failure of framing. Leiby uses the 3D modeling program Blender to depict painting tools, as in 'The Ground is Still Wet, but I Never See it Rain,' where digital objects overlay a painted canvas, suggesting a disconnect between process and outcome. In 'Still Life with Bottles IV,' digital objects appear in a grey, contextless space with an uncanny relationship to light. The mixed-media piece '10.08.23' combines newspaper scraps and a bird photo on painted wood, with a painted paper shard curling around a bird, upending natural dynamism. 'Untitled' features syrupy shellac crawling over layers of an old novel, a Dior ad, and a cat photo on a wooden board. 'Tarts' shows hazy cakes in flat daubs of paint, possibly nodding to Cézanne's wonky perspectives. Throughout, Leiby incorporates everyday materials like old advertisements and newspapers alongside oils and acrylics, creating intentionally misplaced painterly gestures that deflate and comically portray artistic practice without halting it.