Heidi Locher: The Silence of Sleep

About

Heidi Locher's series of concrete painting installations intend to interfere with the fabric of the Jerwood Project Space. These pieces will be installed to fit within the architecture but to somehow disrupt the visual reading of the space by creating tension between the floor and the walls. The seductive surface of the paint and the starkness of the concrete appear to hold hidden obsessions, memories and fantasies at the hand of the artist, as though it is divulging a secret or hidden memories, the link between intimacy and discomfort. Locher comments: ‘Architecture has its own realm a special physical relationship with life, an envelope for the life that goes on around it, a sensitive container for the rhythm of the footstep on the floor or the silence of our sleep. Art is a message or a symbol of that place real or imaginary that penetrates to the very core of our existence. A smell, a noise, a conversation, the heavy door closing behind you, a dark corridor, an unspoken threat, a buried memory, the nuance of things, the implied and deepest experience I know.' Heidi Locher uses paint to explore the viewer's experience of the surface which she communicates emotional experiences of pain, seduction, intimacy and paranoia in the hope of drawing the viewer into this dark and physical place. The evocative materiality of paint is crucial to her work. The paint becomes like a skin exploring recurring themes of sex, violence, obsession, fantasy, and the nuance of gesture.