Sandra Boeschenstein

At first glance, Sandra Boeschenstein’s filigreed ink drawings seem harmlessly conventional. The artist disguises the sinister in charming costumes, hides the disturbing in scenes of everyday surrealism, and and papers over it all with obscure titles like the ones used by Paul Klee. Diese Augen erschöpfen an zwei Steinen von gestern (These Eyes Are Exhausted from the Two Stones from Yesterday), 2006, for example, is the name given to two oversize eyeballs that, like spotlights, lie on a dissecting table as they peek over two cliff faces. Or Was sind deine Reste (Which Are Your Leftovers), 2003/2004, which consists of a sequence of finely drawn interiors, as small as cardboard boxes. Here, couples have divided up rooms and left their discarded belongings in them: an empty bed, a solitary wing chair, a knocked-over television. This artist, born in 1967 in Zurich, draws using microgram-fine ink on white paper or cardboard and covers certain sections with monochrome washes of brown linseed oil. However, within the confusion created by her hair-thin lines, certain objects are carefully and clearly highlighted: a loaf of bread, a woman’s body, an ibex. In her pictures, the terrible abyss is hinted at through comic translations—the bread lies on a series of treadmills, then morphs into a naked female form; the ibex’s antlers break through tabletops; the optic nerves of gigantic eyes intersect in a fantasy landscape. The drawings are often done on extremely large sheets, creating a fantastic cosmos that both charms and terrifies.

Translated from German by Jane Brodie.