Call Me Ishmael, Sophie Bouvier Ausländer’s first solo presentation in our Brussels space, takes its name from the opening sentence of Herman Melville’s iconic novel Moby Dick. Inspired by the novel’s symbolism, biblical as well as fictional, Sophie Bouvier Ausländer’s body of work is rich in imagery that softly slips into our imagination like a weaving.
The sea setting and its metaphors in Melville’s novel are echoed in the recent series through the use of sprayed and diluted gouache in flowing and effusive compositions. Expressive lines and shapes capture the tumultuous atmosphere of Melville’s narrative. Rather than confining herself to the shade of the deep blue sea, the artist explores a spectrum of brighter colours sputtered, sprinkled and squirted onto the various media to mesmerising visual effects. As in the former series, fragments of the underlying maps or newspaper print occasionally peak through to offer yet another dimension in the work and its layering.
Before creating the series Call me Ishmael, Bouvier Ausländer crafted sculptural net-like structures, which serve as objects of their own as well as stencils for her paintings. The artist places these grid-like sculptures onto various supports, such as maps, newspapers, tissue and Japanese paper, then sprays gouache paint over them to transfer a ghostly image, or shadow of the netting. These nets loom in variations in all the new works, resembling a moving grid that appears, fades and vanishes, similar to a fisherman’s net in the water.
Her ongoing exploration of how humankind shapes and transforms our planet recently expanded into a meditation on time, at the heart of her major commission for Église Saint-François in Lausanne. Entitled Contretemps and on view until 19 October 2025, the project unfolds in two large-scale installations. In the quiet Billens Chapel, a net-like structure and its ghostly imprint on a layer further back recall the Call Me Ishmael series, while in the nave, a cascade of black shimmering rays stretches from the organ to the choir, tracing a fragile, uncertain trajectory of time through space.
Another recent project linked to the Call Me Ishmael series reveals music as a different important source of inspiration for Sophie Bouvier Ausländer. Drawn to the rhythm, experimentation and density of contemporary jazz, she has collaborated with pianist-composer Sylvie Courvoisier, a Brooklyn-based Swiss musician and winner of both the Swiss Grand Prix and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Music Award (2025). For Courvoisier’s new album, releasing early October 2025, Bouvier Ausländer is crafting 200 unique vinyl cases, turning each sleeve into a work of art.
Sophie Bouvier Ausländer (b. 1970, Switzerland) has held numerous solo and group shows in Switzerland, France and the UK. Her works entered collections such as Caldic Collection, NL, Frankel Collection USA, as well as Musée d’Art de Pully and the Musée des Beaux-Arts du Locle. The artist has received the prestigious Grand Prix awarded by the Fondation Vaudoise pour la Culture
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