Born in Baden in 1956, Silvia Bächli enters Basel’s Schule für Gestaltung at twenty, then continues her studies at Geneva’s Advanced School of Visual Arts. She divides her time between Basel, Paris and, since 1993, Karlsruhe, where she teaches at the Staatlichen Akademie der Künste.
For twenty-five years now, the artist has explored the world through her drawings. Three equivalent phases make up the slow process of her output, viz., production, selection and hanging. Once they have been created, the drawings are carefully selected in order to retain only the most pertinent, then groups are worked out to construct dialogues of images on the walls and throughout the space. Like pages torn from a logbook, the drawings prompt the eye to wander over the structures, tonalities and forms, which oscilate between the real space, personal space and imagined space.
Documented in numerous publications, her work has been the subject of major solo shows, notably in Germany, Switzerland (Basel’s Kunsthalle and Museum of Modern Art, Bern’s Kunsthalle, Geneva’s Contemporary Centre of Art, Musée d’art et d’histoire and Mamco) and France (the Georges-Pompidou Centre in Paris). Winner of the Drawing Prize of the Daniel and Florence Guerlain French Foundation in 2007, Silvia Bächli has been chosen to represent Switzerland at the 2009 Venice Biennale.
For twenty-five years now, the artist has explored the world through her drawings. Three equivalent phases make up the slow process of her output, viz., production, selection and hanging. Once they have been created, the drawings are carefully selected in order to retain only the most pertinent, then groups are worked out to construct dialogues of images on the walls and throughout the space. Like pages torn from a logbook, the drawings prompt the eye to wander over the structures, tonalities and forms, which oscilate between the real space, personal space and imagined space.
Documented in numerous publications, her work has been the subject of major solo shows, notably in Germany, Switzerland (Basel’s Kunsthalle and Museum of Modern Art, Bern’s Kunsthalle, Geneva’s Contemporary Centre of Art, Musée d’art et d’histoire and Mamco) and France (the Georges-Pompidou Centre in Paris). Winner of the Drawing Prize of the Daniel and Florence Guerlain French Foundation in 2007, Silvia Bächli has been chosen to represent Switzerland at the 2009 Venice Biennale.
