Pippy Houldsworth Gallery is delighted to present Angela Heisch’s second solo exhibition in London, comprising a new body of paintings and works on paper. Working on her grandest scale to date, Heisch brings together the lavish quality and elaborate style of the Baroque with the creativity of the unconscious mind as espoused by the Surrealists.
In these new works, movement is the subject and Heisch’s signature organic forms are propelled across the canvas in an unfolding geometry that generates waves of energy. Although rendered in meticulous detail there is a sense of gesture and action in the sinuous line and curvature of the artist’s interlocking compositions. Each painting represents a landscape, whether land, sky, sea or deep space, yet stripped of all objective associations they are fundamentally depictions of the elemental, at once familiar and molecular, yet ultimately unknowable. Abstract shapes conjure a range of tangible associations from apples to planetary orbs, anchoring the viewer and creating a point of entry that is stable throughout the body of work.
Heisch’s luminous application of pigment accentuates its physicality and ability to embody weight. Evoking atmospheric descriptors of pressure and light – such as density, dampness and haze – each complex composition concentrates elements with conflicting properties, from delicate contours and soft gradients, to luminous stretches of opaque colour. Such playful contradiction is at the heart of the artist’s practice. In her pastel works on paper, Heisch plays out nascent ideas, allowing intuition to supersede preparation and colour, whose emotive qualities can be a distraction, to surrender itself to mystery. Heisch invites her audience to respond with curiosity, presenting an open-ended state of possibility.
Angela Heisch (b. 1989, Auckland, New Zealand) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received a BA Fine Arts from University at Potsdam, SUNY, NY (2011) and an MFA from University at Albany, SUNY, NY (2014). Recent solo and two person exhibitions include GRIMM, Amsterdam (2022); Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London (2021); Davidson Gallery, NY (2020, 2019); Projet Pangée, Montréal (2020); Transmitter Gallery, NY (2019); Gallery 106 Green, NY (2018); One River School, Allendale (2017) and No Place Gallery, Columbus (2016). Recent group exhibitions include I Do My Own Stunts, Spazio Amanita, NY (2022); Romancing the Surface, curated by Loie Hollowell, GRIMM Gallery, Amsterdam (2021) and Present Generations, Columbus Museum of Art, OH (2021-2022).
Heisch’s work has been featured in publications including Artforum, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, Juxtapoz and ArtNews. She was artist in residence at Guttenberg Arts, Guttenberg (2018); Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Amherst (2016) and Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Ithaca (2014). Her work has recently been acquired by New Orleans Museum of Art, LA; Columbus Museum of Art, OH; The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; ICA Miami, FL, and The Whitworth, Manchester.
