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until 05.04. | #4577ARTatBerlin | Galerie kajetan Berlin presents from 08th February 2025 (Vernissage: 07.02.) the exhibition frgmntd lmnts / lmntl frgmnts by the artist Nicole Heinzel.
Galerie kajetan is pleased to present frgmntd lmnts / lmntl frgmnts, the first solo exhibition of the artist Nicole Heinzel (*1969) in its rooms. Heinzel’s works impressively combine painting and drawing as well as abstraction and figuration. With an impasto technique perfected over the years and the resulting plasticity of her two-dimensional works, the artist creates pictorial worlds based on natural forms. Through reduction, fragmentation and re-formation, however, she ultimately creates a non-natural, universal vocabulary.
Nicole Heinzel | frgmntd lmnts / lmntl frgmnts | Ausstellungsansicht / Exhibition view Galerie kajetan 2025 | Courtesy the artist & Galerie kajetan | Photos: Gunter Lepkows
The fragment as a method and the structure as a visual result have always determined Heinzel’s artistic practice. It is a constant search for the essence and the unifying moment of all visible and invisible things, which the artist captures by means of formal reduction and a sometimes microscopic approach. Her Scapes and LINEscapes impressively illustrate her artistic approach, which is characterized by a multidisciplinary approach:
The artist projects specially photographed landscapes, forest, sea or cloud views enlarged onto a canvas that is completely covered with a 2 to 3 mm thick, still damp layer of paint. Heinzel draws or cuts the outer and inner lines of her nature-based motifs into the canvas and, after a long drying phase, applies a second layer of paint over the entire surface. This is then removed so that the secondary color only remains in the lines and indentations.
Nicole Heinzel | frgmntd lmnts / lmntl frgmnts | Ausstellungsansicht / Exhibition view Galerie kajetan 2025 | Courtesy the artist & Galerie kajetan | Photos: Gunter Lepkows
The sophisticated impasto technique is reminiscent of printing techniques and gives the works a relief-like surface. The images created in this way challenge our perception: are we looking at sea, landscape and sky scenes or – as in the case of the well-known LINEscapes – at abstract, constructivist-looking color fields?
Using digital and analog methods of inversion of foreground and background, mass and space, light and shadow, the artist alienates her natural motifs such as rose petals or treetops, levels out visual hierarchies and thus transforms the original motif into a universal structure. We see high-contrast compositions that convey dynamism, impressive volumes and tactile surfaces. Heinzel skilfully navigates between micro and macro perspectives of a color and form-reduced organic world, between its presence and absence.
Nicole Heinzel | frgmntd lmnts / lmntl frgmnts | Ausstellungsansicht / Exhibition view Galerie kajetan 2025 | Courtesy the artist & Galerie kajetan | Photos: Gunter Lepkows
The artist captures her motifs in a direct way – using one of the first photographic processes, the cyanotype*, which she produces directly in nature. Although the artist only uses this process to create motifs and the cyanotypes are always further processed, the production process itself – the application of the chemical substance, which turns blue when exposed to sunlight, using a brush – already marks the transition to painting. Blue as a recurring color in Heinzel’s work thus also refers to this analogously photographic step within her phased creative process.
In order to structure this process, Heinzel uses so-called frameworks – self-imposed parameters that guide the act of painting. She sets herself timers and interrupts her work at set times in order to preserve the respective stages of her painting, to avoid reworking and, more importantly, to reveal the creative process. This interplay of construction and spontaneous intuition characterizes all of the artist’s work groups and reflects her profound engagement with the medium of painting and the act of painting itself.
Nicole Heinzel | frgmntd lmnts / lmntl frgmnts | Ausstellungsansicht / Exhibition view Galerie kajetan 2025 | Courtesy the artist & Galerie kajetan | Photos: Gunter Lepkows
While her frameworks bring out the supposedly unfinished and ‘freeze’ individual creative phases in the picture, the final layer of wax in Heinzel’s works demonstrates her claim to perfection. This layer smoothes the surface, conceals traces of brushstrokes and lends the works a surface aesthetic reminiscent of photography, emphasizing the contrast between process and completion.
However, her works not only convey the painting and creative process itself, but above all also reflect the mechanisms of our perception, which is selective, subjective and therefore fragile. By dissolving the boundaries between photography, cyanotype, drawing and painting and using a multidisciplinary approach on an equal footing, the artist achieves a multi-layered aesthetic that is supported by organic forms, relief-like plasticity and a sense of achingly abstraction.
Nicole Heinzel | frgmntd lmnts / lmntl frgmnts | Ausstellungsansicht / Exhibition view Galerie kajetan 2025 | Courtesy the artist & Galerie kajetan | Photos: Gunter Lepkows
Nicole Heinzel was born to German parents in Benghazi, Libya, and has lived in Iran, Trinidad, Tobago and Scotland. Between 1987 and 1991, Heinzel studied art, design and photography at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee, Scotland. In 1998 she continued her studies at Kingston University in London. Heinzel has lived and worked in Berlin since 2003.
Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, both in private and public galleries and museums. Heinzel’s works are part of important private and public collections, including the collection for Max Imdahl at Situation Kunst in Bochum and the Museum Pfalzgalerie in Kaiserslautern. One of her LINEScapes, the work #2,49 from 2008, is on permanent display in the exhibition Landschaft als Weltsicht at the Museum Unter Tage in Bochum.
* Cyanotype = The cyanotype is a photographic process from the 19th century in which a UV-emissive solution is applied to paper. Exposed areas turn blue, while areas covered by leaves or flowers, for example, remain white.
Vernissage: Friday, 07 February 2025, 6-7 pm
Exhibition dates: Saturday, 08 February – Saturday, 05 April 2025
To the Gallery
Image Caption: Nicole Heinzel #4/41 | 2025 | 120 × 220 cm | Oil / Medium 5 on canvas | Courtesy the artist & Galerie kajetan
Exhibition Nicole Heinzel – Galerie kajetan Berlin | Zeitgenössische Kunst – Contemporary Art – Ausstellungen Berlin Galerien | ART at Berlin
