Heidi Locher
Unmarked: Broken Symmetries
21st November - 19th December, 2009
Unmarked: Broken Symmetries
21st November - 19th December, 2009
Rod Barton is proud to present the first solo exhibition in London by artist Heidi Locher.
Displayed at this exhibition are five new paintings from her new series of work titled Unmarked: Broken Symmetries.
Displayed at this exhibition are five new paintings from her new series of work titled Unmarked: Broken Symmetries.
This exhibition is accompanied by the following text written by David Mellor:
Unmarked: Broken Symmetries.
To begin to view these paintings we might remember the archaeology of a particular type- an kenotic portrait -in Modernist figuration, made by painters such as Jawlensky or Malevich; elementary faces which re-vamped numinous heads crossed by elementary marks. And then, perhaps to gain more historical perspective, the opening of a more expressionist, painterly figuration, this time filling and bursting the face portrayed with braided paint, from Velasquez to Matisse's dirtily brushed milliner wife in 1905, or, later, de Kooning.
As her recent paintings developed, Heidi Locher recognised two kinds of face which were appearing on her canvasses: the emptied-out, kenotic, and the full one, replete and already assigned and cursed with patriarchal meanings. When full, a purple lassoo declines to an apex below, to a 'chin': but when empty it rises to a point above ( Ubu's face, bound in a pastry sack and claimed by gravity), dumb and unmarked, apart from the odd wipings and dribble, like the upturned face of a pale and scarified Madonna.
The full ones, the ones full of painterly plenitude, are open heart tissues of flesh as old, printed, medical photographs, paint as voluptuous meat - what Bacon wished for. The full ones are open-chested, like the preliminaries to an autopsy. Here is a mire of flesh whose 'fullness' is composed of the noise of the world.
Author of these paintings, Locher sees herself oscillating between the empty and the full- for don't both refer to women? And she has written and wondered whether she should admit the noise of the world, to "let the voices in" to the white faces circumscribed by those purple horse collars; that is, to engorge them, to flood them with a register of jangles latent in these pulsing purses of red and white paint, to live inside the empty-faced ones.
Heidi Locher completed her MA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in 2006, previously she graduated as an Architect from the Royal College of Art and subsequently setup her own architectural practice, Paxton Locher Architects. Recent exhibitions include Blyth Gallery, Imperial College, London, Kingsgate Workshop Trust, London and Jerwood Gallery, London.
Image:
HEIDI LOCHER
Untitled, 2009 (No.3)
Oil on canvas
120 x 88 cm
© the artist, courtesy of Rod Barton, London
ROD BARTON
One Paget Street
London
EC1V 7PA
+44 (0) 7989437214
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