Artist Statement
A lot of what I do as a painter is a process of counting time and a reflection of everyday living. I make layers of pattern that reflect my thinking about all kinds of grids and meshes and fields of energy. I want to inhabit these patterns in a quite literal way. I’m not interested in purity but rather in life: walking, noticing small optical events such as a light reflected or interrupted, interactions with strangers, mistakes, moving through doorways and vestibules, reading and writing, Freudian slips, weather.
I work with a structure, but fall out of it all the time. The grids are always contaminated, unreliable, shifting. I want two halves to equal one whole, but they never do. I make things that clearly refer to knitting, weaving, or quilting and I’m after the kind of made-ness and comfort that that an object like a quilt can bring, but there’s an absolutely necessary tension in my work between beauty and not being able to wrap oneself in it. It’s a distancing that’s vital to experiencing painting.
I want nothing but pleasure and am confounded in that desire, so the paintings are both a record of this disappointment, and a reverie. I’m always aware of a kind of optical disruption and bodily split that I try to explore or remedy in the time and space of painting. Its patterns exist on the comfort/discomfort continuum - a sense of being neither there nor here, home or adrift.
Christine Heindl
Christine Heindl was born in Rochester, New York in 1960. She received a BA in art from Empire State College in 1992 and and MFA from Cornell in 1994. She has shown her work in many venues including Turn Gallery, Songs for Presidents, White Columns, Clementine Gallery and Curt Marcus in NYC, Northern Southern in Austin, Texas and Eli Ridgway in Bozeman, Montana. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Painting in 2001 and a Joan Mitchell grant for painting in 2009. She lives and works in Queens.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2023 • Three person show at NADA NY, With Michelle Marchesseault + Donya Stockton, Northern-Southern, Austin, TX
2022 • Diamond Window; w/ Maria Calandra + Erik den Breejan, Turn Gallery, NYC
2021 • Christine Heindl, Sherry Markovitz, James Sterling Pitt, Eli Ridgway Gallery, Bozeman, MT
2021 • Pencil in the Studio, Curated by Maria Calandra, Hope College Art Gallery, Michigan
2020 • Salon Zurcher: 11 Women of Spirit, part 2, Zurcher Gallery, NYC
2019 • Unhinged, LIC Arts Open, The Factory, Long Island City
2019 • Inland Beachball, Northern Southern, Austin, TX, Curated by Phillip Niemeyer
2019 • The time monitor, the space measurer, Curated by Matthew Capezutto, Macy Gallery, Columbia University
2017 • Archetype Writers, Curated by Robert Otto Epstein, Schema Projects, Brooklyn
2017 • Brave New Work, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA
2017 • Christine Heindl, Inhabiting the Patterns, Bibliowiicz Gallery, Cornell University
2016 • Of an Urban Nature, Organized by +1+1 Art Collective, Pop-up show at Theodore:Art, Brooklyn
2016 • New Developments, Group exhibition for LIC Open Studios, Organized by Casey Conselmo
2015 • 39 x 17, La MaMa La Galleria, NYC, Curated by Elise Gardella
2015 • Ray-Jewel (with Christian Samson & Alessandro Keegan), Pioneers of Inspiration, Brooklyn, Curated by Mike Olin & Joy Curtis
2015 • Checkered History: The Grid in Art & Life, Outpost Artists Resources, Ridgewood, NYC, Organized by David Weinstein and Ruth Kahn
2014 • Working Process, Lorimoto Gallery, Ridgewood, Queens, Curated by Robert Otto Epstein & Ryan Dawalt
2014 • Red Ticket, Apt. 141 Storefront, NYC, Curated by Elise Gardella & Leslie Lund
2014 • Christine Heindl & Alexandra Phillips, Songs for Presidents, Ridgewood,Queens
2013 • All Summer, Gavlak Gallery, Palm Beach, Florida
2012 • Big Queens Drawing Show, Jamaica Center for Art & Learning, Curated by John L. Moore
2011 • Chain Letter, Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles
2010 • Painting Comes Alive, ArtJail, NYC, Curated by Erik Den Breejan
2009 • Top Ten, Wit Gallery, Dallas, TX, Curated by Lori Kirkbride
2006 • Guess Who’s Coming to Lunch, David Reed Studio, NYC, Curated by Dean Daderko
2004 • Freeplay, Studio Ash, Columbus, Ohio (with Leah Wong)
2003 • Christine Heindl: Suns, Clementine Gallery, New York, New York
2003 • Christine Heindl: Radio Crystals, Sierra Nevada College, Incline Village, Nevada
2003 • Family Circus, Clementine Gallery, New York, New York
2003 • Artists Choose Artists, Southeast Ohio Cultural Arts Center, Athens, OH
2003 • Back by Popular Demand, Hult Center for the Performing Arts, Eugene, OR
2002 • Benefit Exhibition, White Columns, New York, NY
2000 • Mood,Curt Marcus Gallery, New York, NY
1999 • 4 From Ohio, Artemesia Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
1999 • White Room solo show, White Columns, New York, New York
1998 • On Your Mark, Artemesia Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
1998 • Empire State Pride Benefit, New York, NY, Curated by Paul Morris and Matthew Marks
1998 • ANA 27, Holter Museum of Art, Helena, Montana,Juried by Peter Frank (catalogue)
1998 • Spring Exhibition, Columbus Museum of Art, Juried by Klaus Kertess
1998 • Benefit Exhibition , White Columns, New York, NY
1997 • Fandom, White Columns, New York, NY, Curated by Paul Ha