Silvia Bächli
"Ohne Titel", 2010
Gouache on paper in artist’s frame
Unframed: 24 ¼ x 14 ¼ inches (61.6 x 36.2 cm)
Framed: 25 ⅝ x 18 ¼ x 1 inches (65.1 x 46.4 x 2.5 cm)
Courtesy of the Artist and Peter Freeman, Inc.

Selected by Barbara Toll

Drawing has always been Silvia Bächli’s primary medium, although the format she employs has changed over time: shifting from black-and-white ink drawings to gouache on larger sheets of paper, integrating color, and moving from linear representations of figures, landscapes, and language to more abstract images, complex patterns, and, most recently, wide swaths of color. A defining quality of her work is the directness and transparency of her mark making, which renders legible where a line begins, ends, or overlaps with another. Her installation methods have also evolved from showing drawings individually to arranging constellations of them on walls and, since 1996, on tabletops. She continues to explore possibilities for installation:  “In an exhibition I try to find a sounding total space with the drawings, placing the sheets in such a way that they relate to each other across the room and across the spaces in between. There are precise places, pauses and clusters, there are repetitions and echoes. This invisible net through the space connects the drawings and makes the space vibrate.”  No matter the arrangement or level of abstraction, connections to nature, place, and visual culture are always present.  Silvia Bächli (born 1956, Baden, Switzerland), has shown her work internationally since the 1990s. She represented Switzerland in the 2009 Venice Biennale.  Recent exhibitions include solo shows at the Kunst Museum Winterthur, Switzerland, and Centro Botín, Spain, both in 2024. She lives and works in Basel.