Amélie Bouvier

Amélie Bouvier (FR, 1982) is currently based in Brussels

The 17th Century brought the Scientific Revolution. Images became essential to astronomical research. Drawing, and its capacity for detail, was used to make the cosmos perceptible. These testimonies, illustrate the evolution of human knowledge as well as evolving consensual perspectives of the future. Though new technologies allow us to reach distant borders, representation of their details remains a complex negotiation. The arrival of photography has not diminished the importance of drawing. This is where my practice begins. I’m captivated by the history of aerial views, outer-space imagery and solar or man blasts. These cosmic observations (17th – 21st century) offer clues that suggest the future as well as the social, geographical and political shudders that cross our present.
My focus is the shaping of work and ideas: the making. Engaged in physical and material processes, many of my drawings adopt strategies that mimic mechanical repetitions where error is unavoidable and often invisible. From sculpting tools to draw with, to experimenting with inks unable to withstand the sun, I try to reveal a reality slightly different than the one science suggests. This has also included a series of silkscreens resulting from the manipulation of archival images, unedited videos stuck between reality and fiction, and objects whose texture distracts from their truth. All works project the possibility that things are not as we perceive them, recontextualizing and preserving details, histories and failed hypothesis.