Sofie Bird Møller So ist es – und anders

With this exhibition Sofie Bird Møller shows her artistic intelligence and strong ability to incite thoughts about identity and body image. She raises questions about authenticity and the relationship between the surface and the underlying meaning in the painting and art in general – which is the reason for the title of the exhibition. No answers are given, there are purely raised questions about and altered on the construction we call: the world.

In our hypermodern society vi phase forward in full speed, and time is not something we have a lot of. In our everyday lives vi have to joggle around in a complex network of information and images. Bird Møller opens up for new worlds or spheres with this exhibition, and gives the beholder an opportunity to stop up and dive down and swim freely in an atmosphere of thoughtful freedom and crookedness that also draw lines over to dark humour and the more surreal.
A central statement in all of her works are her alteration of the beholders ideas about normality in what we see on the surface. Whether it is an old cobber- or steel engraving, the bible or a modern magazine, there immediately pops a kind of compressed image up in our consciousness of what something like that is supposed to look like.

Placed in front of these worlds the audience is thus met by recognisable materials and motives. For example a page from a glamourous magazine where Bird Møller changes the fundamental expression often quite aggressively so that the intervention is the first thing you see. What you think you can recognize and cross of in: ”I know what that is” disappears.
The exhibition shows Bird Møller’s new Interferenze and Ex Biblia alongside some big collages, that all discursively constructs and visualizes her work with what is beneath the surface – the under ciality.

In Interferenze recognisable ad posters and magazine pages are overpainted with both precision and violence so that the female body parts are partly hidden beneath thick, abstract, strategically placed layers of paint.
Bird Møller has brought her Interferenze pieces to a new level in this series. She has used collage techniques to change the painted side. The wood board itself, that the page from the magazine is put op on has become visible and is thus a part of the original motive, making the underground visible for the first time.

The Ex Biblia series is made up of 82 prints from a Danish bibel from 1855. With dyed ink Bird Møller has painted away parts of the motive and then with pencil drawn the details back in again.
Something you especially can look forward to is her big collages, that attacks society’s female body image, that the media feeds us with. Bird Møller installs large posters from fashion magazines on the wall where the translated female body on the motive almost breaks the glueing and is modelled completely out of proportion.
Through this exhibition Bird Møller thus shows her great talent for using various mediums, methods and techniques, where she reacts to the magazine page she is working with.

Sofie Bird Møller, b. 1974 is an educated artist from Byam Shaw School of Art (Central St. Martins), London 2006-07, Akademie der Bildenden Künste, München 1999-2005, and The Royal Danish Artacademy 2001-03. She lives and works in Berlin and Municn. Bird Møller has among others had soloexhibitions in Berlin, Copehagen & Los Angeles.