Sofie Ramos’s immersive installations allow the viewer to physically walk into a painting.

As you approach Sofie Ramos’s STUFF(ed) you are hit with an overindulgence of bright colors, bold patterns, satisfying textures, and stuff – lots of stuff. This site-specific installation is bursting at the seams with revamped household objects, such as rugs and towels dipped in paint, furniture covered in artificial grass, and flat, limp items stuffed into bulging protrusions. Ramos blurs the line between artwork and architectural space, absorbing the furniture, walls, and floor into her abstract paintings to create a surreal, vibrating environment that is both enticing and overwhelming. Surrender your imagination and the furniture comes alive as if you have entered a childhood fever dream or Pee-wee’s Playhouse.

Ramos breathes new life into banal items through stuffing, painting, and wrapping, stripping them of their intended use. Ramos re-uses objects from previous exhibitions as an ongoing exploration in each newly evolved iteration. Manipulation and alteration continues throughout the installation process, as Ramos paints and layers materials as she moves the objects into the space, adjusting and adapting as she goes. Each placed piece informs what comes next, as a conversation begins between the objects. The audio component continues this conversation, giving a voice to the inanimate objects. STUFF(ed) animates and invigorates the junk that clutters our daily lives into a larger-than-life, three-dimensional painting that is playful, eccentric, and alive.

Sofie Ramos lives and works in San Francisco. She received a BA from Brown University in Providence, RI and an MA from University of California, Berkeley. Ramos has created site-specific installations at Fort Mason, San Francisco; Bread & Salt, San Diego; FISK, Los Angeles; and Johansson Projects, Oakland; as well as numerous group exhibitions. She was an artist in residence at the Growlery, San Francisco; Facebook HQ, Menlo Park; and Arts Benicia.

ICA’s Sandbox Project is an on-going series of experimental and site-specific art installations that supports and encourages emerging and mid-career artist to explore and take risks in their own practices.

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STUFF(ed) is ICA Sandbox Project 7 and is supported by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the ICA Director’s Circle.