Whitehouse Gallery, Belgium 6.04 - 10.04.2022
Duo show with Lieven De Boeck

Baechler’s artistic practice, which has its roots in the fashion world, unfolded into unique casts in bronze, ceramics or aluminium encased in the traces of textile work. Today, with her cracked ceramics, she is breaking new ground in the medium she calls ‘hardware’. She explores the potential of clay to breaking point – quite literally – and intuitively follows the material’s forms and visual language as well as the actual production process. When the clay reaches its limits, it cracks. In the crevices of these ruptured landscapes, a sparkle of hope can be found here and there. These are tactile surfaces in which one can drown but also be surprised, such as by a silver of green glaze evoking the magic of new life within the material depths.

The less abstract contemporary bas-reliefs resemble depictions of the sybils. Tender gestures recall a mother’s touch. Embroideries are subtly used to integrate prints in the clay, like a ribbon of words that runs throughout her oeuvre. Each work harks back to a previous one and heralds the next. In this way, she continues to build on the material translation of a narrative while leaving autobiographical traces, the latter via the titles of the works. Like fragments of thoughts, this exhibition also contains two poems. Baechler uses one of her own text to explore an audio piece in collaboration with sound artist Vica Pacheco.
Baechler presents two new Jacquard weaves in close collaboration with the Textile Museum in Tilburg. The gestures, words and speech balloons can be interpreted as the visual translation of a hunger for a world filled with dialogue and touch. The titles refer to the sibyls, the female oracles of the Greco-Roman era. These female prophets evidently know our future and extend their hands to us. But can we still meet them or do we turn our virtual gaze to the void?

February 2022, Louise Goegebeur,
Pictures by Arno Roncada & Hugard & Vanoverschelde