andrea sulzer

stop making sense

August 22 – September 27, 2026

Sarah Bouchard Gallery is thrilled to present Andrea Sulzer’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

Sulzer’s paintings are deliciously eclectic. Some exude fearlessness and bold energy. Others emanate tenderness and calm. All encourage slow looking and a kind of exquisite ‘getting lost.’

“To be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.”
— Rebecca Solnit

“Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are in the infinite extent of our relations.”
— Henry David Thoreau

Exhibition Views In Conversation Selected Works Press

andrea sulzer + sarah bouchard

in conversation

SB: I feel like this work is a significant departure, but it also weaves in aspects from your prior work, including your last solo show. There’s a willingness to be more personal, but also more opaque and playful. You’ve embedded references and whatever you're interested in onto the canvas without worrying about how they’ll be received. As a result, there's a dynamism in the show that is very refreshing. I can't think of an artist or an exhibit I've seen in the past ten years that simultaneously includes such diversity and clarity.

AS: Thank you. There’s absolutely nothing to lose in taking risks. There's no stake. No one's going to get hurt. No one's going to die. The world's not going to end. You know, it's just paint on a canvas, so get over yourself. Now, if I have a thought or an image or … whatever, if something comes, an urge, then I'll try it. A lot of times it doesn't work because my ideas are shit. Most of the time they really are. Well, not shit, but I don't trust them, you know? They come from a different place. But I know when it's right.

SB: Do you know when it's right when you have the idea or when you see it?

AS: When I see it. The idea, as I said, is often bullshit. Or it's just not right for that painting. Like in that painting [points to the image below, left], in that screen, when I first put up that shape, there was an airplane in it. A very rough airplane, and I liked it, but it wasn't right for that spot. Later, I still wanted to make that airplane. So, it went into a different painting.

I used to think it was a failing of mine that so many of my pieces look different. They weren't what other people would think of as a series or a body of work, but they always still felt to me like they went together. I carried that for a while, but then I read an article in the New Yorker about the poet John Ashbery’s process. He was asked about his body of work, and he just gave a really simple answer. He said, “They all come from the same well, so they're all connected, and I just don't worry about it.”

That felt so right.

That's where stop making sense came from. I tell myself ‘stopmaking sense’ because that's where I find I get into trouble. It's the same as when you start to name something in a painting; it feels sort of constricted. Other people have no problem with that. But, for me, the ‘stop making sense’ is not that it shouldn't have some sense, but don't make it have sense. Let the sense find it. Let the sense find itself, you know, just be a vehicle for that.

When I nail something, when it feels good, when it's right, and it feels good, it feels really good. It feels like I've opened something up. Like I've learned something. Like the painting has taught me something. That seems like kind of the only reason to do it.

SB: I want to read you this one thing, because it feels pertinent. You once said, “I want my drawings to feel like portals into new, yet strangely familiar worlds.”

AS: Yeah. I never took the idea of the portal quite as literally as in these works.

SB: Right?

AS: But, you feel it?

SB: Definitely.

AS: Oh, I love that. I want people to feel like they could just sort of lose themselves for a little while. You know? It's harder and harder in this world to get lost. I mean, you can feel lost for sure, but to allow it? That’s rare. So, I like that.