This large-scale, three-dimensional skinning by Heidi Bucher constitutes a unique and highly significant milestone in the artist’s oeuvre. Bucher created this work in Ahnenhaus, her family’s ancestral home in Obermülhe, near Winterthur. The family home was so psychologically significant to the artist and her research that she made many of her most important large-scale “skinnings” there, including enormous parquet floors as well as entire rooms.

This particular work is the only surviving wall skinning from the house, and it was once part of an entire room installation which was later destroyed, making it incredibly unique within Bucher’s body of work (please refer to the archival photograph of the artist sitting in front of the installation soon after she had made it).

The work has further singular qualities. Bucher covered the textile with her signature latex mix using only her hands – an unusual technique – resulting in the artist’s personal “signature” being clearly visible over the entire work, which gives it a painterly quality usually unseen in her skinnings. Furthermore, she uncharacteristically applied mother of pearl to this large work, a technique usually reserved for much smaller pieces, and certainly never to wall or floor pieces, giving it a mesmerising shine that is heightened when the work is viewable from both sides.