SOPHIE BOUVIER AUSLÄNDER

DECEMBER - JANUARY 2024-25

Born in 1970, Sophie Bouvier Ausländer is a Swiss artist based in Lausanne, with strong links to London, where she often spends time working and researching. Bouvier Ausländer studied in Lausanne (CH), Brussels (B) and London (UK); she completed her PhD in 2019 at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL. She is represented by Patrick Heide Contemporary Art London, where she recently presented a series of works under the title “Call me Ishmael” (24 May – 29 June 2024).

Her work unveils loopholes and leaping points between different forms of world making. For instance, she is fascinated by certain books or publications, such as Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” and the Financial Times, that serve as templates to think about the way ideas, political and economic systems, and desires form realities. Bouvier Ausländer’s work creates a sophisticated tension between intellectual pursuits and making processes and their materials.

She is intrigued by the way abstract systems, images and structures manifest, convey and impose truths, which is why she materialises and stresses them. Seen from this wider perspective, her use of maps and grids of all kind, particularly on her works on paper, disrupts the modernist claim of the grid as a novelty. Recently, her interest in enmeshed lines has focused on the fishing net, the spiderweb and even the loom or any form of weaving.

Worlding is happy to welcome her new project of creating an installation in situ presenting as a sort of mesh or net re-organising the space and serving as both a printing method for her drawings – a sort of photographic technique – and their display.