Heidi Bucher – Liesl Raff

Description

People shape spaces – and spaces shape us. This mutual dynamic influences our environment and our perception. The Winterthur-based artist Heidi Bucher (1926–1993) dedicated herself to this relationship with great intensity. Her famous "sheddings" transform walls, floors, and doors into shimmering latex skins. By peeling off these elastic layers, she performatively appropriated the spaces, made their hidden life visible, and gave time and memory a new readability. The artist Liesl Raff (*1979), living in Vienna, explores similar questions but from a different artistic stance. She outfits living and exhibition spaces, softening their hardness. Although Raff also works with latex, she understands the material as a moldable, sensual substance that makes structures appear softer, more permeable, and more physical. Her installations create zones of concentration, intimacy, and security. To celebrate Heidi Bucher’s 100th birthday, the Kunst Museum Winterthur looks to the present. In her notes from 1993 on the sheathing of Villa Bleuler, Bucher wrote: "I must get closer to everything." Closeness meant physical understanding to her. Raff builds on this idea and transforms the White Cube for the exhibition Closer into a breathing fabric of fabric, latex, epoxy, steel, and springy floors. Visitors enter an atmospheric Gesamtkunstwerk, in which Bucher’s early, rarely exhibited drawings, silk collages, and frottages are sensually embedded. The tension between soft and hard materials, between light, color, and different surfaces, connects central features of both artistic approaches. Both artists condense moods with a sensitive choice of materials and trust that fabrics speak their own language. Curated by Lynn Kost. Participants and additional information: Heidi Bucher, Liesl Raff