Born 1968 in Siegen, Germany. Lives and works in New York, USA.
Sonja Braas’ work is fascinating and secretive at the same time. Majestic to dramatic perspectives on nature or irritatingly detailed structures are frequent topics in her work. But they somehow seem strange and artificial. This impression is part of her concept, as the photographs are taken from models that she previously constructed with extraordinary precision in her studio. Enigmatic, sometimes uncanny scenes are frozen in time. From the very beginning of her career, she addresses the idea of a certain media-influenced image of nature and the complex world around the individual.
Central to Braas’ work is the artist’s self-described interest in “the genesis of perception, its causes and consequences, particularly in the definition of self and other.” She is interested in subtle changes of perception, whether naturally or artificially induced, and, most importantly, in the role that images, and particularly photographs, play. Few artists have been able to capture landscapes with the same elegance, force, precision, and sense of abandonment and create astounding reproductions of untamable, unpredictable, and, therefore, unknowable nature. Sonja Braas sees with the eye of a photographer, a sculptor, a painter, an architect, a philosopher.
Braas’ works are represented in international collections such as MAST Foundation, Bologna, Italy; Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York, USA; Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA; Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg, Germany.
