Florence Aellen
Sabine Hirsig
Anna Neurohr
Florance Plojoux

Florence Aellen, born in 1980, lives and works as an artist and art educator in Biel/Bienne. Using graphite and watercolour, she creates symmetrically organised still lifes in which she draws on and reinterprets the conventions of old natural history illustrations from botany, malacology, entomology and anatomy. Her work revolves around the collection, classification and presentation of living things – rendered with precision in her lines and symbolically poised between elegance and transience.

At étage 19, Florence Aellen is exhibiting finely detailed graphite and watercolour works in which insects, plants, bones and other natural history specimens are transformed into strictly symmetrical panels. Her contribution represents the classical drawing aspect of the exhibition.

Sabine Hirsig is a bilingual illustrator (German/French) from the Seeland region. She studied Visual Communication, specialising in Non-fiction Illustration, at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (2008–2011) and completed an internship at the Botanical Garden of the University of Basel. She has been self-employed since 2011, is a co-founder of Pumpipumpe (2012), and teaches at the Bern School of Design. Her work combines scientific illustration with minimalist linework; her current series are created in pencil on paper or wood, in the format 50 x 70 cm.

At etage, Sabine Hirsig is exhibiting 19 drawings from her body of work focusing on nature – precise pencil drawings in which botanical and landscape motifs oscillate between the style of a scientific illustration and free-flowing lines.

Anna Neurohr is an artist and graphic designer who lives and works in Ftan in the Lower Engadine, as well as regularly in Biel/Bienne and Bern. After several years as a florist, she attended the School of Design in Bern and Biel. Through drawing, painting and photography, she explores her observations of the Alps, geology, vegetation and the mythological tales of the Engadin. In 2019, she was awarded the Prix Kunstverein by the Kunstverein Biel, and she was an artist-in-residence at the Fundaziun Nairs.

Anna Neurohr brings an alpine-inspired, drawing- and photography-based perspective to the exhibition. Her works translate observations of the Engadin landscape – vegetation, rock formations, traces of mythology – into series of images and drawings.

Florance Plojoux, born in 1968 in Gassin (Var, France), lives and works as a visual artist in Geneva and Biel/Bienne. After training as a graphic designer and studying visual communication with a specialisation in illustration, she turned her attention to drawing. Graphite is her primary medium; her works oscillate between the micro and the macro, heaviness and lightness, emptiness and density. She regards drawing as a space for independent research and invention.

Florance Plojoux is exhibiting 19 works in graphite at etage 19, in which spaces and objects emerge from dense layers of lines and tones. Her approach emphasises process-oriented, free drawing as a medium of thought in its own right.