Both unsettling and tempting, playful and malevolent, the situations and experiences imagined by Lise Stoufflet oscillate between familiar places, childhood stories and guiltless memories and, on the opposite side, a dark and uncanny dream state that not only absorbs the human presence, thoughts and desolate spaces in her paintings, but at the same time bewilders the viewer. Her works are innocently disconcerting and beautifully surreal. Narrative is richly present in her paintings, the story is not always clear and, often times, unsettling. Part of this tension arises from Stoufflet’s beautifully contained manipulation of color, which marries a contrast of pastel, soft colors with rich, dark hues and creates atmospheres of mystery and intrigue. The closer one gets to untangle the riddles of the paintings the more obvious the trap becomes. The Paris-based artist subtly involves her unsuspecting audience in a strange game without sharing its rules, thus bringing to surface our fear of the unknown and our contradictory feelings towards what we do not understand.