Isha Bøhling is a London based artist, working in painting, sculpture, sound and curating and has shown in Europe, Asia, USA and South America. She represented the UK at the Gongju Biennial, South Korea. Bohling has exhibited in ‘Transit’ at The Recoleta museum, Buenos Aires, Argentina and ‘Mars Now’ Rua Sympatica, Sau Paulo, Brazil. Recent London shows include ‘Systems and Patterns’ The Whitechapel Gallery, ‘Crash Open’ Charlie Dutton Gallery, selected by Matthew Collings, and 'Dig Down in Time', Man and Eve Gallery. US shows include ‘Twin Twin’ at Pierogi Gallery, New York and ‘8x8x8’ at the Soap Factory, Minneapolis. Juried shows of note include the Hunter Museum Tennesse and The Sioux City Art Museum. Bøhling has also been a finalist in the John Moores 23 Painting Prize, Artsway and the Red Mansions Prize. She was short-listed for the Observer Student Prize. Bøhling graduated from an MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, London in 2002.
Isha Bøhling’s work reveals or re-imagines untold narratives recovering past resonances, whilst searching for structures, histories and underlying patterns. It becomes a process of excavation that manifests itself through drawing using objects, sound, video, and painting music and songs that the artist writes and perform herself.
Outdated everyday objects are transformed into musical instruments and surfaces to project upon, often forming a feedback loop in which the object becomes the instrument that both contains and generates the sound work. Bøhling recuperates fragments of possible narratives surrounding the history of the chosen items.
Isha Bøhling’s paintings investigate meaning in pattern, randomness becomes ordered through an obsession to find structure in much the same way as random sound becomes music in the installation work. Seeing her paintings as fragments of the ‘bigger picture’ meaning becomes almost obsolete. It defies classification but is continually being excavated in the attempt to construct meaning. For Bøhling it is about being at the threshold of ‘knowing’
‘I am interested in pattern and what it means. There is a reason why we are attracted to pattern. There is an underlying purpose to the systems behind pattern that I believe form the building blocks of our world and the universe. When looking at our world under the microscope, patterns communicate a certain wonder, be it through their perfect mathematical symmetry or their ability to defy knowledge as we search for meaning.’
