AUDIO
SPACES EMBODIED
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3.
Heidi Bucher
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AUDIO
Heidi Bucher
The work of the Swiss artist Heidi Bucher has had a lasting impact on me, ever since I started planning the exhibition. Bucher conceives space as something living and animate—as interacting with its inhabitants and thus arriving at its own identity. This conception of space was the decisive inspiration for the exhibition idea and its title.
Heidi Bucher developed a technique for “skinning” spaces. She found a way to remove the skin of a room, so to speak—an idea that I find absolutely remarkable. The artist initially applied her method to houses she knew very well from her childhood.
In the exhibition, we are showing three large floor skins. They originate from the house of Heidi Bucher’s grandparents on her father’s side, which the artist called Ahnenhaus or “ancestors’ home.” If you look at the row of black-and-white photographs on the big wall, you’ll see the Ahnenhaus from the outside. In the film, you can follow Heidi Bucher through the house and see how she engages with the familiar spaces as a grown-up woman and as an artist. I highly recommend that you take a moment to watch the film. You will notice how the house veritably breathes history.
It was from 1980 to 1982 that Heidi Bucher made various “skinnings” in the Ahnenhaus. She created floor skins, but also skins of entire rooms. To this end, she covered everything—truly every single inch of the room except the ceilings—with fabric. To this fabric she applied fish glue, which she in turn covered with liquid latex, and then left it to dry. Afterward, she used her own physical strength to peel off this layer of fish glue, textile, and latex—like skin—from the rooms’ surfaces. Traces of wood or plaster, but also signs of earlier use, were captured by the latex. These skins thus have become carriers of histories and stories of the people who once lived in the Ahnenhaus.
Bucher saw the floor as a metaphor for ancestry. You can see that the three skins in the exhibition show different properties: stone flooring, wooden floorboards, and parquet. I feel that this makes their value tangible, as well as the hierarchy of the rooms. Bucher herself associated the rigid spatial structures with the social constraints she experienced as a child and a young woman in the homes of both her grandparents and her own parents. By skinning the rooms, she was able to liberate herself from these constraints; she stripped off their imprints—like a snake sheds its skin. At the same time, she transferred the rooms onto a moveable and light material. In my view, this allowed her to conquer the space.
Heidi Bucher developed a technique for “skinning” spaces. She found a way to remove the skin of a room, so to speak—an idea that I find absolutely remarkable. The artist initially applied her method to houses she knew very well from her childhood.
In the exhibition, we are showing three large floor skins. They originate from the house of Heidi Bucher’s grandparents on her father’s side, which the artist called Ahnenhaus or “ancestors’ home.” If you look at the row of black-and-white photographs on the big wall, you’ll see the Ahnenhaus from the outside. In the film, you can follow Heidi Bucher through the house and see how she engages with the familiar spaces as a grown-up woman and as an artist. I highly recommend that you take a moment to watch the film. You will notice how the house veritably breathes history.
It was from 1980 to 1982 that Heidi Bucher made various “skinnings” in the Ahnenhaus. She created floor skins, but also skins of entire rooms. To this end, she covered everything—truly every single inch of the room except the ceilings—with fabric. To this fabric she applied fish glue, which she in turn covered with liquid latex, and then left it to dry. Afterward, she used her own physical strength to peel off this layer of fish glue, textile, and latex—like skin—from the rooms’ surfaces. Traces of wood or plaster, but also signs of earlier use, were captured by the latex. These skins thus have become carriers of histories and stories of the people who once lived in the Ahnenhaus.
Bucher saw the floor as a metaphor for ancestry. You can see that the three skins in the exhibition show different properties: stone flooring, wooden floorboards, and parquet. I feel that this makes their value tangible, as well as the hierarchy of the rooms. Bucher herself associated the rigid spatial structures with the social constraints she experienced as a child and a young woman in the homes of both her grandparents and her own parents. By skinning the rooms, she was able to liberate herself from these constraints; she stripped off their imprints—like a snake sheds its skin. At the same time, she transferred the rooms onto a moveable and light material. In my view, this allowed her to conquer the space.