Heidi Bucher
Mendes Wood DM
60 East 66th Street, 2nd floor 10065 New York NY United States
Phone: +1 212 220 9943 e-mail:
from June, 2020
It is with great pleasure that Mendes Wood DM presents its first exhibition of Heidi Bucher's work. Due to these singular times that we are living in the show will, for the first time in our program, articulate itself in two iterations – an online presentation that will be continued with an exhibition at our São Paulo gallery space.
"Memory as architecture, memory as skin" brings together a selection of works from Bucher's most notable series, the Skinnings, produced by the Swiss artist from the end of the 1970s until 1990. Bucher's interest in exploring the possibilities of organic abstract forms started in the late 1950s when the artist was making abstract collages with silk. However, until her breakthrough works in latex, her research still flirted with certain aspects of what would later be known as Minimalism, by removing the tangible presence of the artist from the work. After experimenting with more collage in the 1960s, Bucher embarked on a new line of enquiry and began developing her Skinnings series, a study into the relationship and boundaries between architectural structures and the human body, using latex as an artistic medium that would end up playing an iconic role in her practice. The artworks of this period, considered by many to be the pinnacle of her work, were recently featured at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017.
The show presents various latex castings from this period, including of architectural elements from her studio in Zurich, as well as the abandoned mental health institute of Bellevue, and her house and studio in the Grand Canary Islands. Alongside this series of seminal works, this show also presents Bucher's Bodyshells video project of 1972, conceived in California a few years before the artist moved back to Zurich after a long sojourn in the US. This project, in which Bucher was already raising important questions about the body and its relationship to its surroundings, can be seen as one of the conceptual starting points which led her to developing her Skinnings.
"Memory as architecture, memory as skin" brings together a selection of works from Bucher's most notable series, the Skinnings, produced by the Swiss artist from the end of the 1970s until 1990. Bucher's interest in exploring the possibilities of organic abstract forms started in the late 1950s when the artist was making abstract collages with silk. However, until her breakthrough works in latex, her research still flirted with certain aspects of what would later be known as Minimalism, by removing the tangible presence of the artist from the work. After experimenting with more collage in the 1960s, Bucher embarked on a new line of enquiry and began developing her Skinnings series, a study into the relationship and boundaries between architectural structures and the human body, using latex as an artistic medium that would end up playing an iconic role in her practice. The artworks of this period, considered by many to be the pinnacle of her work, were recently featured at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017.
The show presents various latex castings from this period, including of architectural elements from her studio in Zurich, as well as the abandoned mental health institute of Bellevue, and her house and studio in the Grand Canary Islands. Alongside this series of seminal works, this show also presents Bucher's Bodyshells video project of 1972, conceived in California a few years before the artist moved back to Zurich after a long sojourn in the US. This project, in which Bucher was already raising important questions about the body and its relationship to its surroundings, can be seen as one of the conceptual starting points which led her to developing her Skinnings.
 |
Heidi Bucher |
