• Heidi Bucher

    Memory as Architecture, Memory as Skin
  • We paste the rooms and then listen. We observe the surface and coat it. We wrap and unwrap. The lived,...
     We paste the rooms and then listen. We observe the surface and coat it. We wrap and unwrap. The lived, the past, becomes entangled in the cloth and remains fixed there. Slowly we loosen the layers of rubber, the skin, and drag yesterday into today. 
    – Heidi Bucher

  • Bodyshells, Venice Beach, 1972
  • Latex and Architecture

    Latex and Architecture

     Bucher started making these works in Switzerland after returning from the US and Canada in 1975, where she had been living her husband, the artist Carl Bucher. Perhaps pivotally to her practice, her return coincided with the very recent enfranchisement of Swiss women, who were only given the vote in 1971.

     

    Bucher saw the often gendered architectural spaces that she inhabited and interacted with as more than just bricks and mortar. They were receptacles of memory and experience that were very much a living, breathing part of her life. By “casting” these spaces in latex and then “skinning” them by peeling the latex membrane off gradually to reveal an impression of the architectural features of the space, she sought to capture the essence of a room, or an entire building, that had played a significant role in her life, like her grandmother’s home Ahnenhaus, in Obermühle, for example, or the floors of her various studios.
  • Floor piquets details, 1980s (View more details about this item in a popup).
    Bucher's studies for the parquet skinnings, 1975 – 80 (View more details about this item in a popup).
    Floor piquets details, 1980s (View more details about this item in a popup).
    Heidi Bucher at work (View more details about this item in a popup).
    Bucher's studies for the parquet skinnings, 1975 – 80 (View more details about this item in a popup).
    Floor piquets details, 1980s (View more details about this item in a popup).
    Floor piquets details, 1980s (View more details about this item in a popup).
    Heidi Bucher skinning her house in Switzerland, 1980s (View more details about this item in a popup).
    Heidi Bucher skinning her house in Switzerland, 1980s (View more details about this item in a popup).
    Obermühle, Parquet room nr. 9, 1980-82 (View more details about this item in a popup).
    Floor piquets details, 1980s (View more details about this item in a popup).
    Heidi Bucher skinning her house in Switzerland, 1980s (View more details about this item in a popup).
    Heidi Bucher skinning her house in Switzerland, 1980s (View more details about this item in a popup).
    Heidi Bucher skinning her house in Switzerland, 1980s (View more details about this item in a popup).

    Floor piquets details, 1980s

    • Heidi Bucher Obermühle, Parquet room nr. 9, 1980-82 caoutchouc skin, jute 133 1/8 x 104 3/4 in 338 x 266 cm
      Heidi Bucher
      Obermühle, Parquet room nr. 9, 1980-82
      caoutchouc skin, jute
      133 1/8 x 104 3/4 in
      338 x 266 cm
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    • Heidi Bucher Obermühle (Second Floor/Middle of the Room), 1980-1981 mixed media 105 7/8 x 141 in 269 x 358 cm
      Heidi Bucher
      Obermühle (Second Floor/Middle of the Room), 1980-1981
      mixed media
      105 7/8 x 141 in
      269 x 358 cm
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  •
  • By making skins from her childhood home, Bucher wasn’t just asking how we inhabit spaces but how they inhabit us;...
     By making skins from her childhood home, Bucher wasn’t just asking how we inhabit spaces but how they inhabit us; how we carry them with us, even after we have left them. The notion of ‘home’ is not something that can be so easily shrugged off.

     

    – Amy Sherlock for Frieze Magazine, March 2014
  • Bucher carried on using this technique throughout her career. By mapping the corners of houses, details of floors, windows, and doors, the artist explored notions of limitation and domesticity – these skins seem to replicate both the appearance and the essence of all these bodies. By marking the outlines of windows and doors, using them almost like footprints, she brought to her work an almost archeological rigour that allowed her to preserve and recreate the history of places while letting them fade.
  • Skinning of the doors and windows at the abandoned Bellevue mental health institution, 1988 / Photo Gaechter & Clahsen (View more details about this item in a popup).
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    Skinning of the doors and windows at the abandoned Bellevue mental health institution, 1988 / Photo Gaechter & Clahsen

    • Heidi Bucher, Untitled, 1979
      Heidi Bucher, Untitled, 1979
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    • Heidi Bucher, Untitled, 1979
      Heidi Bucher, Untitled, 1979
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    • Heidi Bucher, Untitled (Parquet piece), ca. 1985
      Heidi Bucher, Untitled (Parquet piece), ca. 1985
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