Color (rules)

Donach­ie and Heppner. 
22 Novem­ber 2012 – 9 Febru­ary 2013
Spa­zio Cabi­net, Milan

The color is fixed, it pene­tra­tes the threads of the can­vas accom­pa­nied by the brist­les of a brush or by the flui­di­ty of water. In a sort of con­tem­po­ra­ry tona­lism, that ent­rusts the color and its varia­ti­ons of inten­si­ty with the emer­ging of a pla­s­tic form, soft chro­ma­tic modu­la­ti­ons mould and descri­be shapes and volu­mes. The com­po­si­tio­nal struc­tu­re emer­ges from the accu­mu­la­ti­on of tou­ch­es of color and the sculp­tu­re reve­als its­elf in the chan­geable pre­sence of the color. “A mix­tu­re, for con­cre­ti­ons and shadows, of light of the world with the mat­ter of things”, a pic­to­ri­al Orphism free from the geo­me­tric abs­trac­tion and made con­tem­po­ra­ry by the actu­al reco­very of sub­jec­ti­ve expe­ri­en­ces. The reso­lu­ti­on is full of signs loa­ded with light and vibrant pla­s­ti­ci­ty wit­hout struc­tu­ral limits — Kaye Donach­ie and Dag­mar Hepp­ner seem to indul­ge in the rules of color — that beco­mes Roman­tic tem­pe­ra­tu­re and regis­ter of visu­al misun­derstan­dings for Donach­ie, while pri­mor­di­al and instinc­ti­ve idea in Heppner’s red­un­dant sculpture.

Donachie’s pain­ting car­ri­es out an inti­ma­te rese­arch made of tem­po­ral clues just sug­gested, of gloo­my faces in a sus­pen­ded time, of images emer­ging and get­ting lost in inten­se colou­red sce­nes. They are crystal­liza­ti­ons of lost moments, of inter­rupt­ed sto­ries, whe­re ali­en­ating ele­ments give the sto­ry other mea­nings. The imple­men­ta­ti­on of a pic­to­ri­al sur­rea­li­ty is trans­po­sed on the titles of her works that sug­gest a kind of figu­ra­ti­on made up of mys­te­rious faces wrap­ped in deso­la­te land­scapes or andro­gy­n­ous fema­le nudes, defi­ned by few strong brush­strokes. The color designs, the tone sets light and shadows, as the sculp­tor does with the stone, Donach­ie takes the mat­ter off to let the light in, she lights hid­den flu­id sce­nes to imprint in one’s memo­ry what other­wi­se would get lost.

Heppner’s sculp­tu­ral work mate­ri­al­ly rea­li­zes the choi­se of a strong tone, stripes of color design space defi­ning a free abs­trac­tion fixed in the air. A light cloth, sus­pen­ded, beco­mes a three-dimen­sio­nal ges­tu­re that falls to the flo­or to lean out, sha­pe­l­ess and spon­ta­neous, in volu­metric con­cre­ti­ons made of light and shadow. Spa­ti­al pain­ting or two-dimen­sio­nal sculp­tu­re, Heppner’s work seems to be an air tran­scrip­ti­on of an axo­no­me­tric con­s­truc­tion; she starts from a mini­mal chro­ma­tic sign that she turns in a com­plex solid in a tri­umph of rhyth­mic opu­lence of light and sha­de effects. 32 met­res of cloth dance in a hypo­the­ti­cal Euclide­an space. 32 nuan­ces mixed with them­sel­ves imprint on the can­vas a com­pres­sed tone that is sub­jec­ted to obscu­re color rules.

Maria Chia­ra Val­ac­chi, Wall Street Inter­na­tio­nal Magazine