Sophie Bueno-Boutellier uses paint to transform materials into abstractions. She investigates the binary condition which exists between the pictorial and the sculptural, playing with their boundaries to find new spaces of exploration. Her relationship with painting is intuitive and instinctive, creating a dynamic in which the process of painting feels urgent and at the limit of what Bueno-Boutellier feels she can actually control. The artist transforms everyday materials that have been abandoned, neglected or damaged, such as bed sheets, towels and used clothes. These modest objects evoke a domestic environment creating an emotional space, related to love, family and intimacy. Through her artistic process, she imbues them with an eminence, taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary. Bueno-Boutellier reinvents the world around her, salvaging her objects with care and giving them new life. Each work exposes great vulnerability because the process of making requires her to be vulnerable, letting go of fear and filter in order to create. Bueno-Boutellier practices Tantric Cashmere Yoga which provides a crucial backbone to her artistic practice. Before painting, she first meditates in her studio to create a breathing space, a suspension in which she can approach her work without ego. Applying a bodily experience to her material by embracing the shiva/shakti dance (the dance of union), the subject matter of her paintings is revealed through the processes of making. What emerges is a choreography, a tuning score, inspired by the material. A way of connecting to something physical through improvised and intuitive movement.
Sophie Bueno-Boutellier (b. 1974, Toulouse, France) lives and works in Marseille, France.