Was an art exhibition overnight on April 5th, 2025 at Dead End in Bern by Chrigu Blum.
With “HERAS”, I realized my first public art exhibition, choosing as its venue a nightclub in Bern, Dead End.Beyond the opening night, the name “HERAS” stands for self-acceptance and tolerance — a long journey with many detours that began more than three decades ago.
In primary school in Zweisimmen, I published my first artwork in 1996 and distributed it to the entire class. I was said to have talent, though that never fully made sense to me — I simply enjoyed drawing. I later attended various drawing courses in Thun. It was clear to me that I wanted to enroll at the School of Arts and Crafts in Bern.
As part of the entrance exam for the School of Arts and Crafts, I was supposed to draw an apple, among other things. That was a step too far for me at the time. I stopped preparing, decided instead to train as a polymechanic at WIFAG, and moved to Bern.
Even during my apprenticeship, I repeatedly questioned whether I should have tried for the art school after all. But once I had started something, I finished it. My indecisiveness and uncertainty about what I truly wanted led me to a wide range of temporary jobs. I worked as a construction laborer, assistant ski instructor, sawmill worker, freelance graphic assistant, and bouncer at the Bierhübeli in Bern before eventually beginning to work as a stagehand for concerts.
Concert and theatre lighting fascinated me from the very beginning, and I trained myself autodidactically as a lighting technician. Drawing had to wait and no longer had a place in my life. I even felt I was getting worse and distanced myself whenever people brought up my earlier days as an illustrator.
Having finally found my passion in lighting technology, I was able to establish a small name for myself in the scene and accompanied various bands and theatre productions both in Switzerland and abroad.
A request from the German pop icon Nena brought an unexpected turn to my life. As one of three lighting designers, I was invited to submit my ideas. However, on the evening before the deadline, my computer crashed, forcing me to improvise. Instead of giving up, I remembered that I once knew how to draw.
Early the next morning, I submitted my sketches — and indeed, NENA showed interest in meeting the Swiss illustrator. She invited me to a meeting. We immediately got along very well. NENA encouraged me to keep going and to further develop my sketches. In the end, however, I did not receive the commission.
Nevertheless, my confidence in my drawing returned. Almost starting from scratch again, I filled one sketchbook after another. Every lighting or stage design now began as chaotic scribbles and ended as a carefully crafted artistic composition.
During my time at Atelier Bern 2024, I created my own colorful artworks for the first time. Yet among the countless pieces produced there, none met my expectations. It was time for a new beginning. Shortly before I had to vacate my studio in Bern, I rediscovered my old love for black-and-white painting and the human anatomy. As if it had never been gone, I painted continuously for days that followed — always from memory and always without reference. In the process, I developed my own technique, and the first two works of my series “HERAS” were created.
