Press release Nicole Heinzel – deconstructedreconstructed

Exhibtion opening: Friday, 20 September 2013, 18:00 – 22:00
Duration: 21 September to 3 November 2013
Berlin Art Week: open from 17 – 22 September, 11:00 – 18:00

In her first solo exhibition at the Heinz-Martin Weigand Gallery, Nicole Heinzel will present two groups of works – large-format water pictures and landscape works. The element connecting both groups is the exploration of the line.

In the water pictures, the shapes of waves and the movement of an imaginary sea not restricted by the borders of the picture is reduced by means of deconstruction of the individual structures of the water. Through this painterly digitalisation Heinzel reaches the meta-level: Nature is reduced to geometrically interweaving lines which allow for numerous analogies to (information) technology, genetics, anthropology and ethnology, thus transforming the content of the picture into alternative realities. Simultaneously – when taking a step back – the linear aspect, thanks to a reduced colourfulness, dissolves once again into a quasi-idealised ocean whose shimmering, seemingly geometrically precise water lines refuse to be restricted by an imaginary horizon. The viewer is torn between the two realities of deconstruction and reconstruction – deconstructedreconstructed.

In the landscape pictures, a geometrical deconstruction no longer takes place. Rather does Heinzel deconstruct the picture to leave only the outlines. She achieves this by using exaggerated contrasts, colour values and reductions which resemble the mimicry of a photographic colour negative or – in some of her other works – faded black and white images. This exploration of the positive/negative is also manifest in her working method: Initially, the image of the landscape on the canvas is entirely covered with black paint and therefore de facto negated in order to then, through the use of several tools, be partially exposed once more. This provides us with an abstract view of the underlying landscape – everyday processes of filtering in our brain which are the basis of perception.

Nicole Heinzel was born as a German in Bengasi/Libya. After living in Iran and in Trinidad and Tobago, the family settled in Scotland, where the artist spent two decades of her life. She studied art, design and photography at the Duncan Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee. Then, after having lived in London for seven years, Nicole Heinzel moved to Berlin in 2003.