• INSIGHT: Week 3 | ANGELA HEISCH

    1 - 7 JULY

  • INSIGHT IS A NEW ONLINE PLATFORM PRESENTED BY PIPPY HOULDSWORTH GALLERY, DEBUTING WORK BY A DIFFERENT ARTIST EACH WEEk. NEW WORK MADE DURING LOCKDOWN WILL BE HIGHLIGHTED ALONGSIDE A VIDEO STUDIO VISIT PRESENTED BY THE ARTIST. 

    INSIGHT runs alongside the main gallery programme

    Painting with Light: The Photography of Ming Smith: view here

  • INSIGHT: WEEK 3 | ANGELA HEISCH

  • Rendered with a luminous application of colour, Angela Heisch’s paintings are composed of repeated motifs, curving forms, and delicate dark lines. Drawing inspiration from organic bodies, patterns in nature, and architecture, the artist’s abstract language seeks to capture the sensation of her observations. Heisch’s enigmatic forms encounter one another on the canvas, creating tension or waves of energy though interlocking or obstructive relationships. Each work is characterised by a sense of movement, a fluidity reflected in the opposing properties that coexist on the canvas – hard and soft, light and dark, flatness and depth. Presenting her paintings psychological spaces, Heisch seeks an active relationship with the viewer, provoking playful engagement through association and familiar forms.

  • BLUE PONY TAIL, 2020

    oil on linen over panel
    76.2 x 76.2 cm, 30 x 30 in
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    Blue Pony Tail presents a sense of unfolding from the centre of the canvas to its edges. Voluptuous planes of dense blue pigment interlock and travel outwards as though a blooming flower, whilst contrasting translucent yellow squares are fixed at the midpoint of radiating energy. Sharp distinctions of colour give way, moving outwards to softer relationships between light and dark – gradations of tone that contribute to the painting’s undulating intensity. The work’s title evokes the swish of a horse’s tail or a girl’s hair tied up, an image reflected in two delicate hairlines that follow the motion of the work as a whole, finishing with a singular dot. At the edges, two circles or eyes appear to peer back at the viewer, an invitation to form associations and questions.

  • Eyebrows, 2020

    pencil on paper
    Drawing: 25.4 x 19.1 cm, 10 x 7.5 in
    Paper: 30.5 x 22.9 cm, 12 x 9 in
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    Three small dots or apertures appear to wink back in Eyebrows, a work that engages playfully with the viewer, drawing on the association of brows raised in irony, humour or curiosity. Curved lines flow across a vertical divide, meandering over the surface of the paper, whilst soft gradations of tone gently depict bulging forms that tail off into points. Delicately rendered in pencil, Heisch’s works on paper convey a sense of lightness and agility, moving between areas of dense graphite and bright white.

  • ‘A physical vocabulary is instead required to describe them—hard and soft, liquid and solid, plastic and rigid—these are the dialectics at play in the paintings.’

     Alex A. Jones, The Brooklyn Rail, 2018

  • ‘… what her paintings present is not a fixed arrangement of shapes, but a dynamic interplay of breathing, sentient bodies that are fluid and shifting. It is this protean capacity of Angela’s forms that is of utmost importance within her work.’

     Rebecca Irvin, Art Maze Magazine, 2020

  • About Angela Heisch

    About Angela Heisch

    Angela Heisch (b. 1989, Auckland, New Zealand) lives and works in New York. Heisch received a BA Fine Arts from University at Potsdam, SUNY, Potsdam, NY in 2011 and an MFA from University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, NY in 2014.  Recent solo and two person exhibitions include Projet Pangée, Montréal (2020); Davidson Gallery, New York (2019); Transmitter Gallery, New York (2019); Gallery 106 Green, New York (2018); One River School, Allendale (2017) and No Place Gallery, Columbus (2016). Group exhibitions include 1Gap Gallery, New York; Deana Evans Projects, New York; DC Moore Gallery, New York; Wild Palms, Dusseldorf; Mckenzie Fine Art, New York; Pt. 2 Gallery, Oakland and Crush Curatorial, New York amongst others. Her work has been featured in publications including Artforum, Art In America, The Brooklyn Rail, Juxtapoz and ArtNews. Heisch has been artist in residence at Guttenberg Arts, Guttenberg (2018); Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Amherst (2016) and Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Ithaca (2014).

     

  • ‘I’m curious [about] making paintings that peer back at the viewer, that are confrontational, whilst also playful and inquisitive’

     Angela Heisch, Art Maze Magazine, 2020

  • Selected Press