Sophie Bouvier Ausländer (b. 1970, Switzerland) is interested in investigating the tangibility of things. The Swiss artist eliminates, disrupts or perforates the structure of the objects she works with. One needs to closely inspect her works to understand what is hidden beneath the surface, under painted road maps or torn and shredded papers.
Since Covid-19, Bouvier has worked on a new series entitled The Financial Times series, employing a freer use of colour and gestures that the artist developed in her studio springing from experimental bouts during the first lockdown.
In The Financial Times series Bouvier is leaving the territory of maps to work on layers of the idiosyncratic, skin coloured paper, containing news on the state of our planet and our current global instability. The thin pages and its information are covered with paint, then worked into using Bouvier’s characteristic technique of abrasive diagonal hatching. The surface is scratched, ripped open and harmed, layers beneath are laid bare, colour flakes off and is reapplied.
While content and composition are eradicated and completely modified, they are simultaneously revived and recharged afresh, rearranging our post-pandemic world and vision.
For a tour of Sophie Bouvier Ausländer’s current exhibition, Words, Works, Worlds, please click here.