Henriette Heise: There are pockets, she said

Henriette Heise Press Release

There are pockets, she said is a total installation that takes its starting-point in the fragile and intimate. The exhibition draws threads through the poetic body of work of Henriette Heise (b. 1966), and takes the observer on a journey into a universe of scale displacements, materiality, dreams and darkness.

What is the potential of the images we construct in our minds’ Taking her cue from the sensuality of materials, Heise touches the mental imagery that is part of all our daily lives. As she says: ‘My work is an exploration of our imaginary world of images. It’s not enough just to address the dream images of sleep, because there are also daydreams, which are interwoven with all the other mental pictures that flow through us in the course of an ordinary day. It is these imaginary pictures which sometimes give our world coherence, but which can also offer an escape route from an unbearable reality.’

In the work Dreaming softens you and makes you unfit for daily work, Heise creates a new physical and mental spatiality by covering the large windows of Overgaden towards the street with collages of old, patterned quilt covers. During the day, the interior of Overgaden will be permeated with a soft semi-darkness, and through the textural compositions, sunlight will cast coloured light into the space. When darkness falls, a light will turn on and off, so that from the street, it will look as though the building is breathing with a slow and sleepy rhythm behind the curtain structures. Conversely, Henriette Heise’s Darkness Machines block off the light in the rearmost room at Overgaden.

Just as our mental images are created in an interaction between our own mental structures and something from outside, ‘lens flares’ are created in the interaction between the camera lens and the light source. In the exhibition, these beautiful geometrical shapes can be experienced in Heise’s simultaneously abstract and figurative felt collages and linocuts.

The exhibition title, There are pockets, she said, is a quote from a letter about a woman attempting to live with great sorrow. For her, the pocket represents an exception. Over a long period of time, Henriette Heise has worked with the pocket as both motif and concept. Her works unfold in a labyrinthine universe in which she uses and processes everyday materials. The exhibition at Overgaden presents a number of new, site-specific murals and photo wallpapers, together with linoleum prints, fabric collages and videos.

Henriette Heise (b. 1966 ) studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and the Slade School of Fine Art in London, graduating in 1997. Heise has played an active role in the artistic collaborations Info Centre in London, Det Fri Universitet (The Free University) in Copenhagen and tv-tv. She has also exhibited at Secession in Vienna, the 11th Biennale of Sydney and at the Baltimore Museum of Modern Art.