374-382 - Christian Heinrich - Germany

 OM.2012.181 - Christian Heinrich - Germany

 OM.2012.182 - Christian Heinrich - Germany

  OM.2012.183 - Christian Heinrich - Germany

 OM.2012.184 - Christian Heinrich - Germany

 OM.2012.185 - Christian Heinrich - Germany

 OM.2012.186 - Christian Heinrich - Germany

 OM.2012.187 - Christian Heinrich - Germany

 OM.2012.188 - Christian Heinrich - Germany

OM.2012.189 - Christian Heinrich - Germany
collages from prepared papers
http://www.christian-heinrich.com/

My works of art are always connected with memories. A manifold puzzle of experienced pictures gradually joined to become a whole. The result is a specific mood, a compression of sensuous experienced moments. Each work of art has its own story; it’s filled with emotional energy, a reflection of the inner design of my thoughts, emotions, expectations, hopes, experiences, dreams and fantasies. Later with adequate distance to the art work am I able to interpret the emotional and physical frame of mind I was in. During the working process I put myself in a meditative trance. I choose the appropriate corresponding music to the respective theme, reviving the atmosphere experienced which comes to life. Doing so only allows a limited perception of my surroundings. For the viewer of my work there remains a,”let themselves be transmitted”, sense there own feelings and thoughts going on a journey of imagination and creativity. My personal handwriting is visible in all my art work. That is why I sign the back. Standout signatures are a sign of vanity. The art work no longer has the task to depict a real existing observation, a copy of nature. I attempt to find my own context, abstract forms, looking for symbols that can free the original thoughts and feelings within us. The use of abstraction is a bridge that frees me from my accustomed optical structures. It is a means to the end, an opportunity to concretize my inner images. The argument with abstraction corresponds with the quest for things that can’t be grasped, with the realization to make them graspable. That what is to be painted, is that, what no longer exist to be painted. To portray that “no longer” means finding corresponding abstract forms. Change lies in everything, movement and transitory. In everything there is the joining of contrasting nature and suspense. Everything is in movement. Only when I’m able to begin a process of destruction have I freed myself from cherished things and discover by chance the “concretion”. Talent and aptitude aren’t the sole requirement to be artistically active. It demands a long quest and productive studies. Most of all art is the urge for creativity, the scanning of a huge field, the composition, the destruction and finally the healing. With art we permit ourselves to follow new paths, developing, moulding and probing the world, coaxing up her deepest secrets. The difficulty lies in the reduction of the means. During the course of time one lives through diverse phrases and preferences. One time its certain colours or material, in addition at other times its new technical skills or tools. Then the change itself of the themes, the forms, the essence, and never the less as a personal handwriting being drawn like a red line through all the years of transformation. With the acquisition of more experience and craftsman’s skills the art works gain more and more depth, become more intensive, powerful and lively. My first collages came to being in 1980 while studying at the University of Art Berlin (Hochschule der Künste). In the beginning the montages were rather simple. I cut pictures out of the magazines Geo and Stern that I joined together like a puzzle, which I later over painted with oil paint. With regard to content, the pictures were mostly of political nature devoted particularly to the environment problematic of the 1980es and German post war history. In the years 1986 – 1990 I occupied myself intensively with Greek Mythology. I created countless works to the theme Deadalus and Ikarus. The contents of the myth became a key experience for me. In everything we humans do lay the urge and the danger to cross unknown boundaries. Only the wise notice the tightrope he is on. He strides very carefully, cautiously forward and respects his own boundaries. I travelled to Turkey the first time in 1987 and was deeply touched by the hospitality of the people, the sensitive music and ancient temple grounds with the feeling of time they’ve witnessed. Impressed with the admiration and respect for the founder of the modern republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, whose portrait I came across again and again, I created a critical reflecting series of collages with worked in photoes. But also the radiation emitted from the mighty mosques and the ruins of the ancient seaport of Ephesus didn’t leave me untouched. Especially the statue of the fertility goddess Artemis exerted such fascination that in addition I also did a series of collagen created on a blue base and white sand background. Henceforth from 1990 onwards I’ve chosen the term “Oil Collage” for my technique. In 1995 I travelled to the USA, to California and New York. The world open city of New York suddenly opened me completely new techniques and formal perspectives. In a small shop on Broadway, Kate’s Papers, I found hand-made paper from South America and Asia for the first time. Fascinated from its consistency, its structure and texture the first collages on hand-made paper came into being, in which I expressed my love for the city. Since then I’m like a small child always on the quest for new uncommon paper from far away countries from around the world. There are so many different types of paper.    In 1998 I travelled through the Southwest of the USA, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado and California. How can I capture in my art works these endless distances that I never experienced in Europe? Everything was so wide and monumental. We travelled for hundreds of miles and the countryside was always changing, across deserts, through canyons, over snow covered mountains and past never ending fields. Now I understood how a landscape can draw an artist into its spell, which fascination the perspective performs, how the play of the distance and the horizon would no longer let me go. In the year 2000 I discovered South Africa, a country that even today surprises and fascinates me from anew. Here I sense my roots and feel at home. In 2002 I went to Cape Town for three months working and teaching at the Ruth Prowse Art School in Woodstock. In that for this continent typical light I created very cheerful, shiningly colourful art works on wood out of hand-made paper. Also the structures obtained through the working process with typical African papers, made from elephant dung or bananas, were even more emphasized by the rich textures. How can I capture, in my art works, this extreme bright light that is very clear one time and at another appears milky? How can I portray the expression, the mood of the landscape without becoming representational? Again everything here is wide but not monumental. Everything here is slightly more graceful and playful. The countryside here is formed by the animals and the people.