Stefanie Heinze

Stefanie Heinze (b. 1987, Berlin, Germany) Stefanie Heinze’s paintings display ambiguous forms that become recognizable as unexpected subjects. From disembodied body parts, to everyday objects, to animal-like figures, her subjects melt into fantastical backgrounds to create vivid visual worlds, which reveal an interplay between high and low culture. Heinze’s brightly colored, imaginative compositions are tenderly subversive in their details and symbolism, complemented with equally lyrical titles. Pencil, ink, or ballpoint pen drawings – sometimes torn and collaged into multi-layered compositions – form a basis for Stefanie Heinze’s artistic practice, mapping for the opulent language of her paintings. Testing the fine line between abstraction and figuration, Heinze is categorically unique, as she explores new senses and possibilities of representation. In the short time since studying at Academy of Fine Arts, Oslo (2012) and graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig (2016), Heinze has exhibited widely. She has had solo exhibitions at Capitain Petzel, Berlin (2022); Petzel, New York (2020); Capitain Petzel, Berlin (2019); LC Queisser, Tbilisi (2019); among others. She has participated in numerous group shows including at Museum Arnhem, Arnhem, Netherlands (2025); Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2023); The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire, UK (2022-23); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2022); Boros Foundation at Berghain, Berlin, Germany (2020) Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany (2020); Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf, Germany (2019); Saatchi Gallery, London, UK (2018); and Tanya Leighton, Berlin, Germany (2017); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (2024). Heinze’s works are in the collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Musée d‘Art Moderne de Paris; MAMCO, Geneva; Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; The Hepworth Wakefield, UK; Marguerite Hoffman Collection, Dallas; The Rachofsky Collection, Dallas; Mead Gallery at Warwick Arts Centre, UK; the Delfina Collection, UK; and the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin. "I draw while on airplanes or sitting on a park bench or while watching TV. I take these notebooks with me. I draw from what's immediate, profane or just coming from the unconscious. If I have a lemon in mind, it will come about. Or if there's an eye and I cover it with something else, it's going to be something else — I cross it out and so on. I use all sides of the sheets in the notebooks, cut them out, maybe collage them. Both sides of the paper work equally as front and backside, of course. With the layering of paper and ink sucking through, these double-sided BBs tease each other in a gentle way. Then I transfer them to large-sized canvases knowing that translation errors will occur. But funnily enough, to redraw on canvas makes me realize how much I forgot; it's like retracing my thoughts."