playing slowies

neugerriemschneider is pleased to present Thilo Heinzmann’s second exhibition with the gallery. On view in our Christinenstrasse space, Playing Slowies comprises a selection of new works that expand upon Heinzmann’s pigment paintings, exploring for the first time the correlation between outsized scale and methodology. Here, compositions feature unbound pigments in their powdered form and fragments of glass as they dash across textured fields in gestures that are at once meticulously calculated and inevitably subject to chance. Singular in their approach to mark making and unique navigation of proportion, they are collections of light, speed, motion and energy, that capture these aspects as they amalgamate to shape new modes of conceptualizing pictorial space.

Thilo Heinzmann’s pigment paintings, each entitled O.T. (all 2022), are the results of diverse cumulative processes, encapsulating subversive approaches to painting and an essential understanding of the discipline’s component parts as developed and refined over the course of his career and across work complexes. Heinzmann reaches toward the essentials, dissecting the medium to expose its fundamentals, and deploying his established tools, including color, form, line, space, texture and contour, in dynamic interplay. In doing so, he strikes a delicate balance between concentrated decision making and unpredictability.

Set against and working in concert with their backgrounds, the pigments’ unmarred luminance interacts and enters dialogue with these bases - opaque coats that transform the canvas’ woven binaries into individuated, energetic picture planes. Heinzmann’s grounds stand as their own entities, drawing attention to painting’s literal and metaphorical foundation, while also providing stages for his pigments. The powdered bursts of hue are interspersed with particles of colored glass, which, along with both the position of a viewer and movement-evoking marks, create layered depth through the manipulation of light and its refraction. This play of light upon each O.T. work lends them an ever-shifting quality that emphasizes Heinzmann’s nonhierarchical treatment of each material and compositional element. Playing Slowies signifies a new exploration of scale for the artist. Presenting O.T. canvases of this monumental size for the first time, alongside an alternating selection of smaller paintings resting on free-standing, cantilevered easels designed by the artist, the exhibition and the works within it approach scale and substance as independent from, yet in conversation with one another rather than positioning them in direct relation: Their motifs respond to dimension, but do not derive from it.