We move further and further away from the many wishes and desires and are amazed to discover how little material substance Silvia Bächli needs in order to magically captivate us: some well-tempered brushstrokes, suitable paper and a viewer who is willing to engage with the artwork and is also prepared to perceive him- or herself during the in depth observation of the colours and surfaces and to follow with curiosity the flow of their own thoughts and sensations.

The pictorial reflection in sensual dialogue, be it with a dense, forceful red-brown, a reedy green or a luminous apricot, leads us to a crucial question: What do you, the picture, do with me? Where are you taking me? What memories do you connect with me?

(Markus Stegmann, from “In the lee of time – On the new works on paper by Silvia Bächli”, Museum Langmatt, Baden, 2023)

Where should the line begin? What direction should it take? What are its qualities? Does it follow its own line, or does it expand to delineate an area? How does it continue after these first decisions have been made? Is the first line followed by a second, and even a third? On a more fundamental level: What materials are to be used? How large is the paper?

(Konrad Bitterli, from “Beginning”, Kunstmuseum Winterthur, 2024)

Silvia Bächli was born in Baden, Switzerland, in 1956. She lives and works in Basel. She works with Galleria Raffaella Cortese since 2013.

Bächli has developed her drawing practice working on sheets of white paper of different sizes, qualities and tones, and using Indian ink, charcoal, gouache or pastels. Using the body and its movements as a starting point, her work spreads into everything that can be considered part of the realm of feeling. In this way she presents a reality made up of fragments and impressions. The result is not just painterly moments: the drawings often seem to capture, as if in film stills, a cinematic way of looking at bodies and things or their details, at landscapes, gestures, structures, and processes. Her works tell stories without an actual beginning or end, just a visualization of a moment captured in time.