Sophie Bueno-Boutellier, Reprise

The Approach is pleased to present Reprise, Sophie Bueno-Boutllier’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. Working between sculpture, painting and installation, her practice engages with the body through improvised and choreographed actions.

Bueno-Boutellier’s works reveal an aesthetics of silence and contemplation which nonetheless hinges on the raw materiality of the work. Painted canvases are folded, curled and affixed with steel appendages or placed upon plinths. An abstract ceramic sculpture remains unfired while a tousled, paint-flecked fabric drapes from the gallery wall. These works appear to eschew traditional categorisations of medium, instead exploring the haptic and spatial relations that exist between the objects, the gallery space and the viewer. The forms themselves are the culmination of the artist’s gestures and movements in what becomes a dance with the material. It is both ritualistic and sensual, capturing the energy within the studio of a given day.

For this new body of work, Bueno-Boutellier introduces stainless steel bars to her recognisable folded canvases. In You thought I’d be heartless without you, But I love harder., 2025 a twisted steel bar hangs from a cable. The eventual form of the bar was created by Bueno-Boutellier bending the metal against two tree trunks in the garden of her studio. This direct interaction with the environment of her studio and its surroundings speaks to the diary-like nature of her work, as well as the performative, instinctive actions that inform her practice. In using modest materials and objects that relate to themes of love, family, and personal memory, Boutellier’s installations evoke a domestic intimacy.