Kunstraum Dornbirn

The Austrian artist Sophie Hirsch (born in 1986) has developed a sculptural language centered on the tangible interplay between body and psyche. She employs the sensual as a means of experience and knowledge formation.

The physical plane reaches us playfully through our own perception with and in the artistic works. For example, Hirsch builds chair objects with commercially available hemorrhoid cushions and massage balls, sofas made of fascia rolls, loungers covered with acupressure mats. The installation arrangements of these hybrid objects in the exhibition space are disconcerting, because everything is familiar and yet nothing seems as expected. It is not about abstraction, but about meaningful connections that are usable. The objects do not conceal that they will cause physical pain during use, and accordingly, the first resistance is physical, in willingly exposing oneself to it. Yet, they carry an idealistic promise: We will feel better afterward.

In her highly aesthetic structures, Hirsch references the functional mechanisms of current self-care hypes. Countless snippets on social media propagate that mental health is individually attainable—and, under the guise of care, likewise condemn failure as an individual shortcoming. The intensive interaction of body and mind, and the development of healthy self-efficacy, forms the common thematic basis of Hirsch’s sculptures. The works, however, dissect the relationship between psyche and body in a way that highlights the inner ambivalences of being human as systemic and culturally conditioned, emerging from socialization, and, above all, fluid.

For Hirsch, the teachings of Joseph Pilates provide a discursive field of physical sustainability, which metaphorically unfolds the theme of balance through strengthening and lengthening. The exercise equipment developed by Pilates, such as the “Chair” or the “Reformer”, finds its way into the balancing of sculptural building blocks, as in the works at the exhibition “Structural Integration” at 83 Pitt Street, New York City (2017). Here, the artist creates a fragile balance in frameworks with tension springs, which are held in place by blocks of concrete.

In all the works, the surface, the nature of the materials used, and their connection to one another are particularly significant. Hirsch plays with the haptic and tactile understanding of the world as an intuitive quality with direct physical and emotional feedback. What holds everything together beneath the human surface seems to be turned outward in fascinating contrast in plastic works like ‘Big Red’ (2023): The silicone shaped by plaster structures symbiotically connects with dyed neoprene fabric, even taking on its color in places, if not to say, causing it to bleed through. A seemingly inward glance is created, into motionless, sticky fascia or fat marbled flesh — beautifully repulsive, shockingly close, and irresistibly attractive.

For Kunstraum Dornbirn’s historic assembly hall, Sophie Hirsch is developing a new large-format and site-specific installation.

Biography Sophie Hirsch was born in Vienna in 1986, where she now lives and works. She studied Sculpture and Multimedia at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna from 2006 to 2011, and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 2004 to 2006, specializing in photography and sculpture.