Heike Simmer

Dialogue

Heike Simmer (*1982, Bad Ems) lives and works in Cologne, Germany

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The exhibition title Dialogue. refers to the way the artist progresses in her creative process, each phase relating to the previous and the following one, creating a unity. In her large-scale paintings, exhibited for the first time in Luxembourg, Heike Simmer explores the possibilities of dynamic pictorial universes. Her artistic interest lies in the ambivalence between abstraction and figuration; her approach is purely intuitive, combining different techniques and rhythms. The large canvases become a physical counterpart to her own body. First, as they are lying on the floor, she applies multiple layers of paint to the canvases, then, while hanging on the wall, the artist begins adding chalk drawings. The monochrome surfaces convey a sense of calm, while the multicoloured parts vibrate and are in constant movement. These shapes resemble dancing body parts; each form defines the following one, creating a dynamic dialogue. The focus, however, lies on the interplay between the obvious and the vague, as the artist aims to encourage the viewer to abandon binary thinking. The exhibition also features her so-called ‘objects’, where the artist enters a three-dimensional space. These forms caught her artistic interest, focusing not on their function but on their shape, seen as an extension of her paintings.