Born 1974 in Copenhagen.
Lives and works in Berlin.
Sofie Bird Møller is known for her work with found materials such as fashion ads, photos, old prints, billboards and similar. Her work explores the immanent flow of images from mass media and artistic intervention. Pages are torn out from well-known fashion magazines and painted over with both precision and decided violence, so the motiv appears as an abstract form. The reshaped works and painted shapes partly obscure what lies underneath, and anthropomorphic figures are suggested through thick, lush brushstrokes – replacing the extensively photoshopped and manipulated bodies in the original image.
Sofie Bird Møller fragments the organic waves of color and demands that the viewer behold the artwork for a few seconds or minutes longer than usual. With this technique, Bird Møller seeks to “prolong” our gaze, and through this practice, she both questions and undermines the body ideals and the found images, which are transformed from soon-discarded, money-driven ads to strong and often humoristic artistic gestures as well as subtle political statement. As with the over-painted advertisements, her modified paintings urge additional attention. The prefabricated paint strokes are cut in neutral forms in order to refrain from signaling anything other than just being deliberate interventions, which then begs the burning question as to why this particular part of the painting has been selected.
Sofie Bird Møller graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich, and she holds a Master’s in Fine Art from Byam Shaw School of Art (Central St. Martins), London. Her work has been presented at a number of international solo and group shows.
