Jahn und Jahn presents the second solo show by Julius Heinemann at the gallery.

Trained as a photographer with a practice informed by his subsequent studies as a sculptor, Heinemann has constructed a painterly oeuvre that comes to fruition in the exhibition entitled The Sound of Words Falling, a quote derived from American artist Robert Ryman (1930-2019). Following the natural divisions of the gallery the artist presents a new body of work composed of paintings and watercolours, some of which on first sight allude to represent curtains fluttering in the wind, obstructing ones view only to subsequently give way to a clearer vision. Read in analogy with the citation of Ryman, the installation of the works in space epitomizes a poetic attempt to grasp the contemporary moment full of potential amidst abundant ambiguity. In recent years Heinemann has been interested in subject matters ranging from the transformation of painting in history to the developments of photography from the camera obscura as a large eye apparatus into modernity – all the way thinking sculpturally and architecturally. Balls and rocks have served as placeholders in his works eliciting children’s games or playground experiences. Elsewhere a vertically suspended sundial beam broke the exhibition vista, while an angle at the tip of a removed ceiling dwelled on a gallery’s former height limit (Camera Lucida (Roman Road, London) 2014). If in previous series Heinemann has also challenged classical painting with a paint roller or impregnated walls and other supports with poetic traces generated by the spray can, these works also evoked the memories of the late 1990’s Munich urban hip-hop era as manifested in the Graffiti Hall of Fame and to which the artist contributed as a teenager. Departing from a palette of primary pigment, Heinemann’s work now pays witness to the interplay of colours, with brush strokes that evidence the tension between landscapes and opacities. His paintings reference architectural elements that are geometrically structured and rectangular, their layers tracing a palimpsest of actions, with gestures of colours receding into the background, re-emerging organically, and alluding to myriad temporalities: the longer the process of creation lasts, it seems, the less imminent meaning surfaces. The Sound of Words Falling thus also represents a departure from spatial painting installations in the artists practice, as inherent to the concept of fresco painting. Inspired by his studies of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s studies on existentialism, Heidegger’s quest for being and turn from modern subjectivism as well as Novalis’ influence on early Jena romanticism, Heinemann’s work on view is geared towards an understanding of what we perceive and a questioning of how we process information and construct reality. The artist explores space through drawing with paint, relying on the interplay and dependability between light and the structure of volume. Reflecting on site and notions of site as experience, the paintings and watercolours emanate the desire to overlap with reality through a painterly process, addressing the complexity mediated by social location, indeterminacy as well as ontological equivocacy. The works on view at The Sound of Words Falling stem from a studio production and represent a move away from the spray can, employing brushes for the first time. They thus transmit a sense of fragility or realisation akin to tropes of mind games, abstract connections, the ephemeral, daydreaming, the unreal, fantasy, that connect the viewers subjectivity with a metaphysical tincture of being, merging our own existence with reality. The watercolours on view test materiality as media and represent an extended exploration of pictorial elements, letting the process run free, a modus operandi close to expressionist painting. In line with prior productions, the works on view in The Sound of Words Falling toy with the perception of ephemeral light in the studio, thrown and cascading shadows – they are pictures that take on a life of their own. Light reflections acquire different shades of grey as a narrative of projections and superimpositions. While the watercolours are additive, in the paintings the colours do overlap subtractively. Where previously the white wall was the reference in Heinemann’s paintings, now the texture of the canvas has become the common denominator. A sanded surface contains moments and colour nuances recorded in the winter days of Berlin; sparks of colour are emanating from a muddy primer. The viewer encounters a classic exhibition that focuses on the existentialist, subjectivist, and romantic notions of being in the world derived from the artist’s own subjectivity and relayed in the individual works as signifiers of vital force.

Tobi Maier is a curator and critic based in Serra de Montejunto, Portugal