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Heidi Bucher

Herrenzimmer , 1977 – 1979

Heidi Bucher remains best known for objects involving latex created in the last two decades of her life. She received her education at the School of Applied Arts in Zurich, then left Switzerland in 1969 with her husband Carl and two sons, traveling to Canada and the United States. After her return to Switzerland in 1973 and separation from her husband, she established her own studio in the basement of a former butcher's shop in Zurich. In 1976, she created "Borg," the first of her "Häutungen" or "skinnings," using latex to cast the entrance door and wall of the refrigeration room in the butcher's shop.

"Herrenzimmer," on display at MUZEUM SUSCH, represents Bucher's first large "Raumhaut" or "room skin." She created it by covering sheets of gauze in multiple layers of latex and mother-of-pearl paint, then peeling off the gauze to produce a negative of the interior of the "gentlemen's study" in her parents' house in Winterthur. Bucher described the process of "skinning" as "we paste the rooms and then listen. We observe the surface and coat it. We wrap and unwrap. The lived, the past, become entangled in the cloth and remain fixed there. Slowly, we loosen the layers of rubber, the skin, and drag yesterday into today."

Bucher's highly personal "room skins" are paradoxical works: they are both frozen in time and fragile, ready to crumble away. They embody themes of preservation and presentation, as well as transformation and breaking free from conventions.

Muzeum Susch - Heidi Bucher
© Studio Stefano Graziani



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