Artist: Angela Heisch
Exhibition title: Springs
Venue: Projet Pangée, Montreal, Canada
Date: June 11 – July 24, 2020
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Projet Pangée, Montreal
Montreal, June 8, 2020 — Projet Pangée is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Angela Heisch (Brooklyn) as part of our program in the former Czech Consulate. Appropriately titled Springs as a way to mark new beginnings, this exhibition opens onto a series of emotional landscapes, carefully composed and rendered through the delicate and focused gestures of the artist. Heisch’s practice voluntarily shifts away from the turbulent, garish and high-speed world we inhabit—her paintings and drawings, a soothing balm for our hyperactive minds, open pathways for deeper quietude and create space for metaphysical introspection.
The question of harmony is at the core of Heisch’s work and is palpable through both colour and composition. By playing within complementary colours and theories such as chiaroscuro, Heisch lays a serene groundwork for the viewer to glide quietly into a meditative state. Not unlike the effect of staring into the vastness of the sea, a tender field of grasses, or a scintillating city from above, Heisch’s paintings offer the rare sensation of untroubled experience. Through the softness of our gaze we become more attentive, sensitive to the elegant gradients and gentle movements that the paintings offer, revealing an expansive beauty in what looks like an effortless interlocking of forms. Like the fluidity of movement, shapes swirl, drift, or evaporate before our eyes, making us conscious of the larger forces that orchestrate such delicate gestures. Tiny beauty marks, wispy eyelashes and jewel-like irises can be found here and there across the canvas. Far from disrupting the fullness of Heisch’s paintings, these added touches only draw us in more deeply.
Angela Heisch (b. 1989, Auckland) received her MFA from SUNY Albany in 2014 from which she was awarded the Dedalus Foundation Fellowship. Heisch uses repetitive motifs to evoke strange but associative imagery. Employing an architectural and anthropomorphic abstract language, often interlocking or obstructing one another within an intimate space, her work intends to confront the viewer with feelings of playfulness, uncertainty, and intrigue. She has had recent solo shows with Davidson Gallery (New York City, USA), Gallery 106 Green (Brooklyn, USA), One River School (Allendale, USA) and No Place Gallery (Columbus, USA). Some recent group shows include Artual Gallery (Beirut, Lebanon), DCMoore Gallery (New York City, USA), Transmitter Gallery (Brooklyn, USA), Crush Curatorial (New York City, USA, Pt.2 Gallery (Oakland, Usa), Angell Gallery (Toronto, Canada), and Mother Gallery (Beacon, USA). Her work has been featured in numerous publications such as New American Paintings, ArtMaze, ArtNEWS, Art Forum, Art in America, The Brooklyn Rail, and Maake Magazine.
