“Heidi Bucher: Spaces are Shells, are Skin” Installation view at Art Sonje Center, 2023 Photo: CJY ART STUDIO.Art Sonje Center presents “Heidi Bucher: Spaces are Shells, are Skin,” an exhibition by Swiss female avant-garde artist Heidi Bucher. This exhibition is the artist’s first major retrospective in Asia and will run from March 28 to June 25.
Heidi Bucher is an artist who explores the human body and modes of existence within a specific space through sculpture under the clear theme of liberation. Her work deals with individual and collective experiences and memories through the theme of private space and belongings, 19th-century architectural fragments, and feminism.
In particular, she explores spaces embedded in patriarchal hierarchies, such as the floorboards of her ancestral home, her father’s study, and the treatment rooms of Freud and psychiatrist Dr. Binswanger, the leading experts of their time on the misogynistic disease of hysteria. To explore these spaces, the works utilized the technique of skinning, which involves applying latex to a space, covering it with fabric, and then removing it.
The exhibition features four skinning installations, including Parquet Dragonfly, 1976, Floor Skins, 1980, and Parlour Office of Doctor Binswanger, 1988, along with approximately 130 sculptures, installations, videos, and drawings. The retrospective first opened in Germany in 2021 and made waves in the international art world, traveling to the Bern Museum and the Susch Museum in Switzerland before coming to Korea.
