Artist.
Contemporary abstract painter working with architecture and space.
BIO
Sonia J. was born in Portugal, 1971, studied Economics and brings a 30-year professional background in management and technology, including entrepreneurship and C-level responsibilities in high-stakes corporate systems. This experience informs the work structurally: decision-making under pressure, accountability, and long-term performance shape a disciplined approach to restraint, continuity, and clarity. Painting developed as a measured recalibration rather than a narrative break, allowing the practice to operate through duration and sustained presence. Female strength is understood as a condition—responsibility, containment, endurance—rather than a theme. This context does not explain the work. It clarifies the conditions under which its autonomy is maintained.
The artistic practice does not originate in a rupture of identity, but in a shift of regime of potency. After more than three decades in executive leadership roles within international corporate environments, Sonia J. did not abandon one form of rigor for another more intuitive one; rather, displaced rigor itself—from strategic control and representational decision-making to a material, intensive, and experiential mode of thought. Painting became the site where thought is no longer assumed to be given, but is forced into existence through material resistance, texture, rhythm, and duration. The work operates beyond the white cube not as a rejection of institutional spaces, but as a refusal to depend on them as conditions of meaning.
The paintings function through presence rather than display, through time rather than instant legibility. Surface, matter, and gesture are not illustrative but operative: they act upon the body of the viewer, creating fields of sensation rather than objects of recognition. The image ends. The gaze inhabits. What changed was not who I am, but how thought operates: from a regime of control and representation to one of immanence, risk, and intensity.
RECOGNITION & PROFESSIONAL CONTEXT
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2026
MUST Museum – Southern Italy
December 19, 2025 – January 4, 20262025
5th International Contemporary Art Fair-IT’S LIQUID Group, Barcelona, Spain, July 18–281st International Braga Contemporary Art Exhibition, Braga, Portugal, September 12–14
Galleria Cael — Gifts of Art | L’estetica del Dono, Milan, Italy, December 5–19
Galleria Art Spazio Tempo
Venice, Italy, December 6–16 -
2024–2025
Top 10 Berlin Contemporary Artists
Berlin, Germany (Finalist)2025
Premio Internazionale Artista d’Europa
Venice, Italy (Nominee)2025
Artist of the Month — IT’S LIQUID Group (September) WinnerInterview with Luca Curci, CEO, IT’S LIQUID Group
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2024 — €500 reference value (15P format)
2025 — €1,200 reference value (100 x 100 cm format)(Reference value. Not a guarantee of resale or appreciation.)
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Italy, 2025
SPA installation — 4-star hotel, Verona
Restaurant installation — Monte Baldo, Verona
Lobby / Entrance — Scuderia Rural, Spiaggi
Portugal, 2025
Healthcare center installation
Legal corporate office installation
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Portfolio reviewed and discussed with:
Charlotte Paritzky — Director, Z&B Gallery / Co-Founder, OBRA Art
Quentin Métayer — PR & Communication, Perrotin
Flavio Scaloni — Gallery Manager, Galerie Lo Scalo
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Quentin Métayer – Perrotin (2025)
“Overall, Sonia J. works demonstrates a solid mastery of material and a coherence between gesture, texture, and color.”
Charlotte Paritzky – Z&B Gallery / OBRA Art (2025)
“The large formats and the way you layer paint to create texture make the artwork feel alive and deep.”
Flavio Scaloni – Galerie Lo Scalo
“La Sua pittura… propone una versione aggiornata e reinventata di questa illustre tradizione… con padronanza e consapevolezza del mezzo pittorico.”
English:
“Her work demonstrates mastery and conscious control of the pictorial medium, presenting a renewed interpretation of the Action Painting tradition.”