Projektraum M54 is an exhibition space in Basel (Switzerland) owned by the Swiss artist organization Visarte. Heikedine Günther has been a Visarte member since 2019 and is now presenting new works in the space. These works have been created in her studio in the Swiss alps during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Heikedine Günther / Projektraum M54, Basel. Basel (Switzerland), September 17, 2020.
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Exhibition text:
“In the beginning of 2020 the world came to a halt due to the Covid-19 pandemic. For many people this resulted in uncertainty and hardship. While several aspects oft he lockdown affected Heikedine Günther as well, she was able to benefit from the situation artistically. According to the artist, these ninety days and nights she spend in her studio in the Swiss alps have been the most productive time of her career and she was able to finish several series of paintings and related monotypes. Some of these works had been in her studio for a longer time but were now finished, others were fully new ideas that came to her in relation to the pandemic. Many of these works are now exhibited for the first time in her solo show at Projektraum M54. This includes the new series “Platonic Bodies”, consisting of ten small scale paintings which relate to the ideal of platonic love. Günther will also show new paintings from her series of ‘Rock Paintings’ in which the core takes the form of a massive shape resembling pre-historic tools. The main work, which the artist finished in the spring of 2020, is her diptych ‘Light & Darkness’ (Core No. 439-440). In these new paintings Günther explores the powerful transitions between light and darkness, orbiting the field of tension between two nuclei. Within the nebulous opposites of black and white these nuclei correspond to he abstraction oft he core, which represents both the essence of life as well as the infinite potential of growth.
Besides these newer works the exhibition will also feature a selection of paintings and monotypes from the last two years of Günther’s artistic practice. The center of the exhibition space is reserved for the kinetic sculpture of core garment ‘Core P-a No. 408’ from 2019. The sculpture consists of a four-meter-hight, slender steel frame with a core dress in its center which is being moved by a hidden mechanism. Within four minutes in a slow upward movement, it spreads all the way to the top, revealing the hand-printed erath pigmented cores in warm Terra Sienna earth tones on a chalk-grey-green ground, only to be lowered back into itself after a short time.
All these works in the show center around Heikedine Günther’s leitmotif of the ‘core’, which has taken many forms and shapes since she started painting it 16 years ago. In 2004, Günther took part in an ‘Active Imagination after C.G. Jung’ and found, in her search for an archetype, her inner core. Ever since this experience, the idea of the core has been central in her art and she has continued developing and researching its different meanings and possibilities. According to her research, the core is a universal symbol, which can be found in any culture or religion. It combines within itself microcosmic and macrocosmic relationships: the core is both represented in every single biological cell of our bodies and is the basic form of every planet of the cosmic system. This universal openness of meaning creates the possibility for the viewer to connect with the core on a multitude of levels.
For her research, Heikedine Günther travels a great deal in order to train herself to see the world properly. Between trips, she returns to her quite studio in the mountains of Switzerland to create. A skilled painter, she develops paintings off of which she takes unique monotypes as individual artworks. She has also worked with sculpture, installations, and textiles.”