Anne Bourse

Critical text

The poetic, intimist work of Anne Bourse (b. 1982, France) seems to be traversed by the intrinsic and obsessive forces of the line, the motif and the inscription. In keeping with the widespread practice of drawing with low-cost materials – ballpoint pens, markers, ink and paint – on everyday objects, the artist patiently, slowly creates imaginary and heterotopic spaces. The bright, lively colours of the figurative, textual and geometric forms contaminate a set of various surfaces derived from a domestic universe: newspapers, books, art catalogues, magazines, garments, rag dolls, lamps, sofas and cushions. The ambiguity regarding the origin of these elements, which are sometimes salvaged, sometimes made from scratch by the artist, reveals the opacity of a middle world enlivened by the imaginary regimen of objects that produce a somewhat unfamiliar yet quotidian atmosphere. Anne Bourse creates installations that suggest scenes that are simultaneously familiar and ghostly, indefinite spaces in which real things and the relief of physical life seem to be absorbed by the fluidity, repetition and turbulence of the movements of ink, lines and patterns. The epistolary relationship between her work and the surrounding world narrates the imaginary of an inner language, the result of complex, eclectic inspiration, mixing literature, pop music and self-inscription.

Text by Lilou Vidal