Valeria Heisenberg

The paintings of the Berlin artist Valeria Heisenberg take the metaphor literally of the painting as a reflection of the world. Aluminium boards are painted and colourless varnish is applied. These works are centred round chance found motifs in which a diffuse landscape, usually that of a city, is reflected. At the same time, these false reflections allow the viewer to look behind the glass surfaces to the space beyond, lending the paintings a surprising and confusing dimension of depth. Photographs are the point of departure; these are transferred in detail to the thin metal boards without, however, any attempt to create photo-realist effects: the individual strokes of the paintbrush remain visible. The surfaces of the boards emerge as multiple nested pictorial spaces that are not to be understood rationally.