Jutta Haeckel: Out of Alignment

New York Gallery

Dusseldorf-based painter Jutta Haeckel has developed a style of painting that is unique. In her second solo exhibition in New York, Hosfelt Gallery presents twelve new paintings – nine large-scale paintings on paper and three even larger on linen – in which she uses her signature technique to explore ambiguities of space, perspective and perception.

Haeckel’s painting practice is akin to printmaking. Thin layers of oil pigment are applied to a light-colored ground. As the layers are built up, they describe the edges of and spaces between imagery. Areas with paint seem to recede. Areas with little or no paint appear to exist in the foreground. With careful looking comes the startling and delightful realization that the subjects of the paintings are in fact composed of the unpainted ground.

The subjects are imagined landscapes of tightly interwoven imagery – road maps, fencing, circuit boards, graffiti, architectural elements, plants and branches. She creates net-like surfaces that both screen and reveal the three-dimensional space in the paintings. These densely woven webs of color simultaneously describe multiple viewpoints and ambiguities of scale, creating a picture space that fluctuates between flat and deep, macro and micro, representational and abstract.

In this exhibition, Haeckel turns her exploration to the intersections of biology and technology. Examining both the similarities and dichotomies between the two, she points out the fluid boundaries defining their coexistence.

Jutta Haeckel studied at Hochschule fur Kunste, Bremen, Germany, and Goldsmiths College, London, England. This is her third solo exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery, and her second solo exhibition in New York.