In 2002, Andrea Heller creates Netze, a work composed
of two large sheets of paper (250 x 150 cm each) upon
which she draws, in ink, the motif of a diamond grid
from which she then cuts out all the voids between the
intersecting lines. The work is fixed to the wall at the
top and unfurls to the ground. It communicates the
general impression of an aviary, a fishing net or even
wire mesh, with the difference that the cut paper
is extremely fragile. The title Netze also embodies the
other sense of the word, networks, be these human
or from the world of IT.
This work could be considered as fundamental to
her oeuvre. She introduces a technique, ink on
paper, and a motif, the diamond grid, which become
recurrent. She opens up fields such as architecture
(the wire mesh) and nature (the aviary and the fishing
net). She plays with contrasting sensations, the
fragility of the cut paper and the solidity of the net or
the mesh. And, while on the subject of contrasts,
there is a photo (1) of a young man on all fours over whose
body Netze is draped. This records a private action
realised by the artist and underlines the ambivalent
nature of the work which, although fragile, can
still immobilise a human body. The artist invites us to
reflect upon such notions as vulnerability, entrapment,
protection and domination, to which the body, be
it human or animal, is often subject.
The motif
Andrea Heller regularly employs the chequerboard
motif, adapting it in a free and organic manner. Between
2007 and 2012, three works on paper entitled Versteck
develop the motif in a way that is both supple and rigid.
They evoke a blanket with a geometric print that is
draped over forms which, as hypothetically underlined
by the title, could be bodies. One can also sense
a mineral quality, like a gypsum flower with a regular
form and delicate edges. Or a reference to buildings
designed using 3D software that enables fa\u00e7ades
to be sculpted like rippling sails. Other works suggest
a more natural development of the diamond, lending
it an oval form: Widerstand, 2011, is composed of two
clusters or groups that come together, drops above
and domes below. Are these forms vegetable, mineral
or cellular? Or is this a clash between two crowds
from above? Such questions frequently occur when
looking at the work of Andrea Heller. One imagines that
one sees something familiar but, when the scale or
viewpoint shifts, the reference changes completely.
Schneegrenze I, II and III, 2011\u2013 2013, refer more clearly
to rounded mountain peaks while Untitled (smoke),
2015, schematically portrays the eruption of a volcano.
The artist is fascinated by landscape, meteorology,
the slow rhythm of geology and the more urgent rhythm
of the seasons.
Andrea Heller never stops fine-tuning this motif:
the initial mesh becomes the diamond grid, the
diamond evolves into a triangle or a pyramid, is rounded
into a cone or a dome, which, depending upon its
position, could evoke a bowl, a mountain, a thimble, a
breast or a volcano. A game of solid and void, which
is played with geometrical rules, but which is also
vegetable and mineral, or even sexual, as in the case of
the elongated cones that are alternately full and empty.
The archive
How does Andrea Heller assemble her formal vocabulary
and her thematic explorations? In order to
understand this it is useful to dip into her archive, which
she started in 1998. This is composed of photos
taken by the artist and images cut from newspapers,
found on the Internet and even scanned in books
and other publications. When free newspapers first
appear around 2002, she is struck by the proximity
of very different sorts of images, of war, natural catastrophes,
glamour, politics, sport and oddities. She
cuts many out and removes them from their contexts
in order to write her own story. Between 2005 and
2006, she creates collages of images taken from her
archive (2). In 2015, she goes much further in a similar
direction in Vitrine 1, 2 and 3. Here, she creates covers
in the shape of irregular domes that she makes by
gluing together pieces of glass. These covers then
lend their form to plinths upon which series of images
are assembled. The subjects, such as landscapes,
animals, plants, catastrophes and buildings, often
appear as fragments and make great use of the odd
(a sheep buried under its own wool, shapes hidden
under tarpaulins, mysterious rituals, UFOs) or the impermanent
(burned-down houses and forests, a
village destroyed by an avalanche, a caravan cut in half
by a tree). This archive irrigates all her work in a way
that is more or less direct and recognisable.
Reference documents
The form of the glass covers to the vitrines refers to
the contents of such hippy literature from the 1970s as
Shelter or Nomadic Furniture (3), which contain oper-
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ating instructions for the construction of temporary
self-made buildings. These publications from the \u2018Do
it yourself\u2019 (DIY) culture are a mine of information
about caves, huts, tents and domes and about their
history and special features amongst both Amerindians
and Europeans. They explain the construction of each
type of dome, the structure of which is based on the
famous form of the triangular\/diamond grid as used by
Andrea Heller. They address such questions as
materials and nomadic ways of life, tell us about energy,
water, food and waste and put them in their rightful
place at the dawn of the ecological movement.
Several years later, around 1980, Andrea Heller\u2019s
parents join up with other families to develop a
cooperative housing project. Interested in better understanding
the context that had fostered this way
of life, the artist recently discovered a work devoted to
the Selbstbau (self-building) movement, Das andere
Neue Wohnen \u2013 Neue Wohn(bau)formen (4), whose observations
on amateur building in Switzerland largely
draw on an initiative of the Federal Council, which is
described as follows: \u2018In 1978, the Federal Housing
Office, a young body run by active officials, and which
was also one of Berne\u2019s most significant developers,
organised a working congress devoted to \u201chomes built
and administered by their inhabitants\u201d.\u2019 This movement
is a sort of \u2018Swiss riposte\u2019 to American DIY culture.
Architecture
The many works that express her interest in architecture
include \u00dcberbau, 2005, which portrays a heap
of red wooden cubes. This ink drawing on paper evokes
a stylised medieval castle, a breakwater or a setting
designed to welcome actors and their actions. Andrea
Heller chooses to use the German title because
this permits her to play with the double meaning suggested
by the terms \u2018theoretischer \u00dcberbau\u2019, which
describes the theoretical structures conveyed by a work
of art, and \u2018\u00dcberbauung\u2019, which in Switzerland refers
to buildings realised on former agricultural or industrial
land in accordance with land use planning. The references
to self-building are not far away.
Panzersperren, 2006, explores the milieu of defensive
architecture because, in Switzerland, these truncated
pyramidal forms are associated with the \u2018toblerones\u2019,
the concrete blocks that were arranged at the start
of the Second World War as dragon\u2019s teeth: lines of fortification
against the German menace that can still
be found today (5). Barricade, 2015, confirms this attraction
to protective structures by revisiting both the medieval
castle and the provisional barriers created during
street protests.
Andrea Heller has designed her first monumental
installation, L\u2019Endroit de l\u2019envers, 2019, for the Salle<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Poma in Kunsthaus Pasquart. Supporting each other,
the panels recall a house of cards, which aspires to be
a great work yet has the delicate balance inherent to this
ephemeral construction game. With their irregular
dimensions and sombre-coloured surfaces the panels
produce a wide range of impressions depending
upon the perspective of the viewer and, for the first time,
are not an image on paper or canvas but a sculpture \/
structure \/ architectural element that establishes
its presence spatially and is discovered as one moves
around it. This work is, simultaneously, a sort of architectural
fragment from DIY culture, barricades built
by street fighters and a children\u2019s game on an adult
scale. As an ensemble it is ambivalent: between micro
and macro, resistance and fragility, constructive and
destructive, playful and political.
Nature
Nature is another of Andrea Heller\u2019s preoccupations.
In the series Meteorit, 2005 \u2013 2006, large surfaces,
blackened with ink and spray paint and bearing an
organic variant of the triangle \/ diamond motif, attest
to an interest in the long timescales of the minerals
that form the planets. One can almost \u2018feel\u2019 the materiality
of the stone due to the deep and intense treatment
of the colour and the motif. Fundament, 2014, a
work in watercolour and ink on paper, presents another
black surface, this time suggesting the interior of a
cave with thick stalagmites and delicate stalactites in
a mysterious and obscure atmosphere. The sculptural
work Untitled (pompons), 2007 \u2013 present, has a
special status, because it is both site-specific and
evolving. Composed of pompons made from black
wool, it is different every time it is presented because,
firstly, it may be placed in front of a window or fixed
to a radiator or a pipe on the ceiling and, secondly, it is
constantly growing as the artist adds more pompons.
As a result, the pompons take on a meaning very
different to that of a comforting ball of wool. Even if their
appearance recalls coral or volcanic rock, their proliferation
is more suggestive of mushrooms, spreading
viral cells or a colony of tiny living beings who bunch
together in hordes around, for example, a source of heat.
Hybridity
If the motifs of the diamond \/ triangular chequerboard,
the archive, architecture and nature highlight the
system of thought and practice of Andrea Heller, the
idea that encompasses her work as a whole is hybridity.
The framed three-dimensional ink and cut
paper work entitled Die Wurzeln sind die B\u00e4ume der
Kartoffeln (6), 2005, is symbolic of this. What does one<\/p>\n\n\n\n
see? A priori, black trees with thick, pointed branches
and, at their feet, two inclined egg-shaped forms (7). The
title signifies \u2018The roots are the trees of the potatoes\u2019.
So, is this about trees or roots? The branches seem so
sharp: Is one in the world of plants or is this a scaledup
version of the blades of Edward Scissorhands? Do
the egg-like forms represent potatoes, ghosts or
hooded bodies? One can also see them as a nod in the
direction of the figures of the bear and the rat in the
film Der Rechte Weg by Fischli & Weiss.
The human body is one of the most hybrid elements
in the artist\u2019s vocabulary. Reviewing her works one
sees, for example, heads and torsos in the form of carrots,
stalagmites, tubers, intestines, little towers,
menhirs, insects, coffins, balloons and rocks, usually
equipped with legs, sometimes with arms, which
form an anthropomorphic and phantasmagorical \u2018bestiary\u2019.
The body is also treated fragmentarily, as a
skull-potato-owl-penguin, a hand-glove-stele-wall or
even breasts-implants-bra-tea cosies-cheese dishespetit-
fours.
Three recent series take this hybridity even further.
On the one hand, four large ink drawings on canvas
bear the same subtitle (a specific place), a notion that
only exists in the head of the artist but becomes a
\u2018place\u2019 on the canvas. Two rooms is a troubling fusion
of mountains and a face, Wall explores a condition
between the molecular and the built, No entry is located
at the interface between the mountain, the canyon
and minimal architecture while, in Shadows, a menacing
post-human silhouette appears to emerge from a
couple with building-like heads.
On the other hand, the series of sculptures Magnitudes,
2018 \u2013 2019, explores the form of the cone,
more or less broad or long, opaque and with an irregular
surface for those realised in painted ceramic and
transparent and smooth for those in blown glass. The
references to the breast, the bowl, the vase, the
womb, the penis, the mountain and the volcano emerge
one after the other.
Finally, the series of plaster sculptures Terrain vague (8),
2019, which currently contains 37 elements, is composed
of casts that could constitute the beginnings of
an encyclopaedia of forms. One suspects that one can
recognise a Lebanese pitta bread, eggs in a wicker
basket, the bubble houses of the architect Antti Lovag,
an octopus, ancient cobbles, an archaeological dig,
a fortification by Vauban, an intestine, a pyramid or the
udders of a sow.
When one immerses oneself in the compositions of
Andrea Heller, one discovers, in addition to their
initial beauty, a depth, a visual intensity and, also, a conscious
sensitivity to the world. Her attraction to meteorites,
volcanos, caves and mountains testifies to
her close attention to life on earth. Her architectural
experiments illustrate her interest in human actions
vis-\u00e0-vis space, nature, meteorology and society. Her
relationship with the human body affirms a fantasy
that hovers between joy and gravity. By constantly
playing with scales and references, her oeuvre never
stops challenging the definitions and diagrams of our
certainties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1) This undated photo appears on page 59 of the monograph Die
\n Wurzeln sind die B\u00e4ume der Kartoffeln, Zurich: \u00c9dition Patrick Frey,
\n 2012.
\n 2) Die beruhigende Aura der Tiere, 2005; Die Wut ist heftiger als der \u00c4rger
\n und schwerer zu beherrschen als der Zorn, 2006; Hier auf dem Mond
\n ist es auch nicht viel besser, 2006.
\n 3) Kahn, Lloyd (ed.), Shelter, Bolinas, California: Shelter Publications,
\n 1973; Nomadic Furniture 1 and 2, New York: Pantheon Books,
\n A division of Random House, 1973 and 1974.
\n 4) Das andere Neue Wohnen \u2013 Neue Wohn(bau)formen,
\n 12.11.1986 \u2013 4.1.1987, Museum fu\u0308r Gestaltung Zu\u0308rich.
\n 5) More than 2,700 \u2018dragon\u2019s teeth\u2019, concrete blocks weighing nine
\n tons, were built as anti-tank obstacles between 1937 and 1941,
\n particularly at the foot of the Jura in the Canton of Vaud. Their
\n triangular form recalls Toblerone chocolate, to which they owe
\n their name.
\n 6) This is also the title of the book published by \u00c9dition Patrick Frey,
\n 2012, on the occasion of Andrea Heller\u2019s solo exhibition at the
\n Helmhaus in Zurich, 2.12.2011\u2013 29.1.2012.
\n 7) The work is realised in Indian ink on cut paper, recto verso, and
\n the sheet is fixed between two panes of glass held in place by a
\n wooden frame. It was produced as a series of ten, each slightly
\n different.
\n 8) The dimensions of these sculptures vary between 10 and 50 cm in
\n diameter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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