HEIKEDINE GÜNTHER

ARTIST BIO

Based in Basel, Heikedine Günther is a Swiss artist working in painting and ceramics. She began her artistic education in 1987 at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (HFBK) in Hamburg, studying painting under Werner Büttner, Franz Erhard Walther, and Martin Kippenberger. From 2003 onwards, she shifted from figurative painting to abstraction, with the concept of the “Core” emerging as a central element of her practice. Guided by the question of the existential core, her work investigates the relationship between abstract and natural visual languages and the interplay between microcosm and macrocosm.

In 2023, Günther expanded her practice to ceramics, transferring her artistic research from the two-dimensional canvas into sculptural space. Through intensive study and continuous professional exchange in experimental ceramics, she focused on the ancient Chinese technique of celadon. The craftsmanship of this old asian tradition combines harmonious form with technical precision and serves as a fundamental source of inspiration for her work. Her engagement with early Chinese ceramic art raises fundamental structural and existential questions, which she explores through form and colour. The deliberate investigation and continuous challenging of the technical boundaries of the technique lead her to the primary compositional themes that shape her artistic approach.

Günther’s sculptures embody universal archetypes. Each shape is an event that is experienced, sensed, and crafted to give expression to the deeper self. In pursuit of a timeless original form, she seeks to capture the essence of a figure and open hidden spaces. Moving consciously beyond Western cultural frameworks, she establishes a dialogue with a contemporary perspective. The immersive work with clay and reflective engagement with historical and cultural contexts, cultivates a profound awareness of the cycles of human existence, from which she brings her works into the world.


ARTIST STATEMENT

Built by hand and carefully shaped in rotation with a profile template, Günther’s sculptures slowly emerge on the wheel. The process unfolds in a meditative rhythm, guided by sustained conscious engagement and care, with each movement deepening the quiet conversation with the material. In working with the clay between the fingers, a deeper formative energy inherent to the earth reveals itself, grounded in processes of growth and creative becoming.

The celadon glaze allows for the development of a subtle luminosity, traditionally created to emulate jade and associated with purity, prosperity and longevity. Applied by spraying, the glaze moves and settles in unpredictable ways, forming gentle colour nuances that appear after firing and invite quiet contemplation. Yet threading through the glaze, the delicate crackle patterns disclose their material transience and fragility, wrapping the ceramic form like a second skin.

Through a deliberately placed vertical opening, a golden core reveals itself, creating an exchange between inside and outside, between darkness and light, and between emptiness and fullness, thus unveiling the invisible. This gold-painted inner space interacts with light to generate depth, echoing Günther’s Core Paintings, each of which begins on a golden foundation.

In a world revolving around itself, driven by conflict and exhaustion, these sculptures disclose another rhythm, not a cycle of destruction but of transformation, nurtured not by force but by patient inward turning. As archetypal forms they reflect the human desire to discover ourselves.