Sophie Bouvier Ausländer's point of departure for her artistic practice is nothing less than our planet, which can be considered as the sculpture par excellence. Although her works are manifold and versatile, ranging from watercolours and paintings on waxed maps to sculpture and installation; geography, and more specifically cartography have been reoccurring components in the themes addressed by the artist. Furthermore, her works examine more specific enquiries into space such as fractal structures and partial dimensions and their potential perception of multiple versions or possible worlds. Bouvier Ausländer is interested in the tangibility of things. Her creations are arcane, often rudimentary and transitory. The Swiss artisteliminates, disrupts or perforates the structure of the objects she works with. One needs to closely inspect them to understand what is hidden beneath the surface, under painted road maps, shredded world map collages or subscribed plasticine sculptures. Her small and large-scale waxed maps from the Avalanche series for instance are covered with paintand then scratched and scribbled into with abstract shapes or grids, and then sometimes recovered with paint drippings. Exposing hints of theunderlying countries, oceans, cities and borders, one tries to decipherand rediscover familiar environments, names and signs. This way Bouvier-Ausländer keeps our curiosity and familiarity alive while she manages to produce almost entirely new objects that recharge the existing ones. Within a larger framework, her sculptures and works on paper, though somehow organic, reflect a rather abstract aesthetic and connect it to aprofound interest in environmental and socio-political questions. Ultimately, Bouvier-Ausländer wonders how sculpture and painting can change the structure and the understanding – or at least the perception of our world.

Sophie Bouvier Ausländer has held numerous solo and group shows in Switzerland, France and the UK. Her works entered important institutional collections such as the Musée d'Art de Pully and the Muséedes Beaux-Arts du Locle. The artist has recently received the prestigious Grand Prix awarded by the Fondation Vaudoise pour la Culture.

She lives and works in Lausanne, Switzerland and London, United Kingdom

Text courtesy Bernhard Knaus Fine Art.