Charline von Heyl
Charline von Heyl’s first exhibition at Xavier Hufkens presents a suite of new paintings and works on paper that dazzle in their invention, wit, and formal tension. Long regarded as a vital force in contemporary painting, von Heyl conjures a visual universe that is as expansive as it is unpredictable. The result is a protean body of work, yet instantly recognisable for its confidence and inventiveness.
von Heyl came of age in Cologne and Dusseldorf during painting’s resurgence in the 1980s. While many of her contemporaries embraced conceptual detachment and irony, von Heyl steered toward a visual idiom of exuberance, surprise, and mischief.
At the core of von Heyl’s practice is a deep belief in painting as a generative, open-ended mode of enquiry. Each canvas becomes a site of experimentation, shaped less by singular vision than by collision — between discipline and improvisation, elegance and boldness. von Heyl doesn’t so much resolve a painting as conjure the possibility of one. Her works offer no answers. Instead, they refine the question: what can painting do now?
Charline von Heyl (b. 1960, Germany) lives and works in between New York, NY and Marfa, TX. She studied painting in Hamburg and Düsseldorf and participated in the Cologne-based art scene in the 1980s. The Giddy Road to Ruin will open at the George Economou Collection in Athens in June, focusing on works from the 1990s to the present and curated by Adam Weinberg and Skarlet Smatana. Her paintings were featured in the 59th Biennale di Venezia (2022). von Heyl has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. (2018); Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle (2018); Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2018); Tate Liverpool (2012); Kunsthalle Nürnberg (2012); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2012); Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2011); Le Consortium, Dijon (2009); Dallas Museum of Art (2005); and Vienna Secession (2004), among many others.
von Heyl’s work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom; Whitney Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris France; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; among others.