Heinke/Austen
Berlin : Detroit
P. F. Galleries 213 E. 14 Mile rd. Clawson
Hartmut Austen and Geka Heinke
November 12th - January 7th 2005.

PF Galleries plays host to an all German exhibition featuring painters Geka Heinke, based in Berlin and currently working in New York City, and Hartmut Austen, now residing right here in Detroit. Both were schoolmates back in Berlin, and while they apparently worked quite similarly back at that time, their work has traveled down distinctly different path before coming together again here in Clawson.

Heinke’s work is immediately visually captivating. Upon entering the gallery and encountering “poles” and “race courses,” (each named quite literally) the viewer might become slightly disoriented as Heinke plays tricks with our eyes. She creates a convincing optical illusion of depth. They demand close inspection, as we try to ascertain if these possess volume or not. They are in fact completely flat, composed on thin panel, cut in the shape of the forms she creates.

The majority of her subject matter is re-creations of ordinary, domestic items – a wooden coat rack, wallpaper, a shelf, and an electric socket. Photographs of the work hardly do them justice, as the illusion that they are actually the objects they appear to be, would likely make one disregard them altogether. (The exhibition card falls victim to this pitfall.) The painting as faux furniture somewhat brings to mind Richard Artschwager’s pieces which dance on the borders of sculpture, furniture, and painting. (For words on this, click here.)

What Heinke’s done is transform the mundane and least noticed things about our homes into something extraordinary, at least visually. I think of James Joyce’s equating of an ordinary day of a man with the epic events of Homer’s Odyssey in his book “Ulysess.” This connection is a bit of a stretch to be sure – but there is no doubt Heinke has turned a coat rack and a race track into things that are fascinating to look at. In her words, “My work seeks this moment where the familiar tips over and becomes suddenly strange.” And she has accomplished that as these are visual marvels and perhaps even make us look at everyday objects in our lives a little bit differently.

Austen approaches painting from a different, but equally formal stance as well, utilizing the concept of the grid throughout his work. Often he adds emphasis to the grid through the use of architectural structures – grids of windows and supporting frameworks. Over top the grid, Austen has a jagged quality of mark making, playing multiple layers of perception over one another. This look of torn edges hints at an association to American painter Clyfford Still. While Austen’s work primarily deals with representation, his mark making and palette choices share much in common wit Still’s abstractions. As Still’s work seems to have another world behind the dominant flat surface, so too do the strongest of Austen’s works reveal multiple layers of reality, the grid, the physical architecture, and a more vivid layer beneath, revealed as if wiping away fog off a window.

Austen’s appears to paint quite loosely, but on closer inspection, they are actually worked and reworked, to achieve the illusion of raw, immediacy on the marks. The environments he depicts evoke a quality of isolation. High rises seem like vacant shells. Outside of the movies, I have little experience with East Germany except in the movies, but I have seen Detroit, and Austen captures the bleakness and desolation, without being terribly specific representationally. Even when people are an integral part of his compositions, there is still a feeling of emptiness and loneliness. In this mix of abstraction and representation might lie a testament to the inhumanity modern living has wrought. Austen’s works may not be as immediately visually compelling as his country woman, but in the exploration of his layers of marks and pictorial reality, there is much for the viewer to linger upon and return to, and a deep sense of pathos worked into the paintings.

Knowing the two artists’ shared past, it might have been nice if some images from that time were on hand to see how their paths diverged. In any case, a strong showing from Heinke and Austen, definitely worth checking out. – Nick Sousanis, ws@thedetroiter.com