Katrin Heichel
dal 15/10/2009 al 13/11/2009
Segnalato da
15/10/2009
Katrin Heichel
Galerie b2, Leipzig
Votiv. In Heichel's work, the meaning of materiality is as recurring as her motivic affinity to use popular picture worlds or profane, rough items in her paintings. In their synthesis both levels reveal the underlying sense of an aesthetic 'stepchildren' upgrade through the sensual surface so that they appear as precious objects.
In Katrin Heichel's work, the meaning of materiality is as recurring
as her motivic affinity to use popular picture worlds or profane,
rough items in her paintings. In their synthesis both levels reveal
the underlying sense of an aesthetic „stepchildren“ upgrade
through the sensual surface so that they appear as precious objects.
In the italian votive temples Katrin Heichel met an aesthetic
relation: Wax votives of bodyparts, notes, pictures that are folksy
rooted lead this kingdom of materiality to a general appearance which
is, to quote the artist, „Biennale worthy“. Not only does a visual
power radiate from the houndreds and thousands of pleadings and
appeals, which make an example as physical inheritance for catholic
material presence, but the visual attraction refers directly to the
underlaying magical ritual, also.
With her cycle, „Votiv“ Katrin Heichel does not proceed to finished
tracks of the Votive-aesthetics, instead she makes less popular
symbols or curious sides of saints her own to reinterpret them in
comparativly clear figure worlds and to connect them with her personal
life. She puts, for instance, a toat, attached to the votive-boards as
a symbol for female fertility, in an infusionbottle or restates the
wax-leg (a frequent votive offering) in her paintings to a prothesis.
She works up the cult of saints int the person of Donatus, who is, in
certain regions of Southern Italy, worshiped inter alia as patron for
handicaped children.
The largest painting of the exhibition shows a baroque seeming
construction site. Light shines behind a door, draped with blue tarp
and generates associations to Dionysios' Pseudo-Areopagitas light
metaphysics. In this way catholic mysticism and the visual expression
of the believers form a mental framework of the exhibition, whereas
the aesthetic of Katrin Heichel's paintings occupies an astonishing
distance to the primal-pictures through the clarity of the picture-
spaces, which also matches the contentual controversy in which a very
own view and interpretation of catholic material presence, veneration
of saints and neoplatonic light metaphysics was made. (Lu Potemka - Translation Anna Gehlen)
Opening Friday, October 16, 2009 7 pm
Galerie b2
Spinnereistrasse 7, Leipzig
free admission