Rachelle Bussières

Existing at the intersection of photography and sculpture, my work investigates our wider human experience through light, perception and space. I fabricate reflective tools from bent metal and glass to make new photographic documents through the lumen print process, in which exposures of different light sources are registered on gelatin silver paper. Oscillating between two-dimensional images and three-dimensional objects, my compositions merge organic embodied forms with the natural world, anchoring my place within a universal experience. The photographic figures grow and diminish under sunlight and artificial sources, transforming my space into a recording studio dictated by my own conditions of time. Exploring themes of embodiment and cosmology, my practice integrates the sinuous movement and sensuous contours of light. Curvilinear waves glance off of elliptical arcs in forms which refer to both the otherworldly and the corporeal – astral movements and organic femme bodies; they embrace sensuality inspired by my personal embodiment practice, a intuitive-movement meditation which I use to enhance my senses and relationship with my physical body and surroundings. The color palette, compositions, and time exposures emerge from an intuitive desire to break away from photography’s prevailing masculine characteristics: technicality, distance, and control. My work is simultaneously personal and universal, connecting the ever-changing state of light and time with the fluctuations of physical and emotional movement.

Rachelle Bussières (Quebec City, Canada) received her MFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 2015.  She was an artist-in-residence at Silver Art Projects, Penumbra Foundation, Banff Center, SÍM, Vermont Studio Center, and Headlands Center for the Arts. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her work is present in various public, corporate, and private collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Four Seasons Hotel, SFMOMA Library and Archives, Facebook (commission mural) in Sunnyvale, Instagram, Inc., Microsoft, Brookfield and Penumbra Foundation in New York City. Awards include the Penumbra Foundation Workspace Fellowship, Canada Council for the Arts (Research and Creation), an honorable mention for the Snider Prize from the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and Finalist for the Aperture Foundation Portfolio Prize. Recent group exhibitions include San Francisco State University, the World Trade Center (NYC), Rubber Factory (NYC), Seattle Pacific University (Seattle), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Brooklyn), Galerie l’inlassable (Paris), Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito, CA), and Present Company (Brooklyn). She has had recent solo exhibitions at Melanie Flood Projects (Portland), Penumbra Foundation (NYC), Robert Koch Gallery (San Francisco), and Johansson Projects (Oakland, CA).

CV

The Costal Post, “Rachelle Bussières visited by Kevin Umaña”, April 20, 2021, Kevin Umaña
“Bussières’s work draws upon various art forms to reshape how we perceive light and shadow as a sculpted form. Her environmentally generated works manage to capture the essence of time progressing and sets a mood in which the optical space is determined by our personal perception.” LINK

Eastbay Express, “Rachelle Bussières”, March 7, 2020, Dewitt Cheng
“…The images of Rachelle Bussières In Light, Conditions of Time appear on first glance to be immaculately painted abstractions of color and light, but are actually lumen-print photographs that abandon photography’s documentary function. Bussières somehow conjures color from black and white silver gelatin photo paper, creating in her layered photograms of various objects, luminous spaces with gliding circles and curves…” Link 

BOOOOOOOM, “Artist Spotlight: Rachelle Bussieres”, October 4, 2019, Jeff Hamada.
“A selection of work by artist Rachelle Bussières. Intersecting photography and sculpture — two-dimensional image and three-dimensional object — Bussières moves through a collision of materials, documents and assembled forms to explore the relationship between the physical world, time, and perception.” Link

Elysian, “Investing in Female Artists”, Summer 2019, Kate McQuaid
“Women artists—from old masters to those just out of art school—have slowly gained traction in museums and on the art market for years. If you’re thinking of collecting art by women, now is the time.” Link

Eastbay Express, “First Friday Guide, August Edition: Staff Pick”, Aug 3, 2018, Amyra Soriano
“Sennish and Bussières will be at Johansson Projects to showcase Concrete Utopia, an exhibit of industrial extremes and an unveiling of the artists’ truths in their everyday lives.” Link

Artillery Mag Online, “Lauren Marsolier, Rachelle Bussières”, September 2016, Cheng DeWitt. 
“Rachelle Bussières’ 14 abstract, medium-sized works in “Strata” combine a painterly approach to materials—inks, plastics and glass substrates, I am guessing—with silver-nitrate photography and solarization, to create subdued landscapes that are not quite landscapes, or are more than landscapes, in delicate grays and browns that recall the albumen prints of early 19th-century photography.” Link

Artforum Online, “Critics’ Picks San Francisco: Lauren Marsolier and Rachelle Bussières” July, 2016, Kim Beil
“The gallery also presents fourteen unique gelatin silver prints by San Francisco–based Rachelle Bussières. The chemical colors and hard edges recall Alison Rossiter’s cameraless experiments with expired photographic paper, but Bussières’s images begin with negatives. “Strata” refers to the geologic features that Bussières photographs and to the darkroom manipulations that give these images a collage-like feel.” Link

Minnesota Street Projects, “Works in progress/ Rachelle Bussières”, 2017. Brion Nuda Roscha. 
“Bussières approaches the darkroom as sculptor, cutting, layering and manipulating photographic materials. Forms and geologic features create images balancing estrangement and familiarity — no solutions are provided, rather an invitation to a dreamlike venture through unknown geography.” Link

 Juxtapoz, “Edge Effect: SFAI’s MFA Exhibition”, May 13, 2015.
“Rachelle Bussieres is a French-Canadian artist who whose experiments with darkroom photography incorporate painting and sculpture. Manipulating the chemical and printing components of the actual printing process, she arrives at thought provoking scenarios and considers the boundaries of human perceptions. But her time at SFAI was never questioned, especially the “thoughtful professors who made me discover who I was am what was important for me.” Link

Magenta, Flash Forward 2016, Honorable Mention, 2017. Link

Big Bad Bettie Press, Rabbit Rabbit: Contributing artist, 2017. Link

Ryall Contemporary, “Rachelle Bussières”, May 27, 2018. Link

• Rachelle Bussières, Blaise Rosenthal, Andy Vogt // High Plains
• COMMUNITY GARDEN // Miguel Arzabe | Rachelle Bussières | Craig Dorety | Matthew F Fisher | Alexander Kori Girard | Kristina Lewis | Blaise Rosenthal
• BEACH BREAK MIAMI // Group Exhibition
• Rachelle Bussières
• Rachelle Bussières + Courtney Sennish