532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel is pleased to present a solo show of recent abstract paintings by Kylie Heidenheimer. On single, dyptich and tryptich canvases ranging from three to four feet square, the artist skillfully blends open, evanescent spaces with gutsy, tactile passages celebrating the materiality of paint itself. In these visceral works, washes of acrylic paint puddle and pool; thick splashes and blobs might impose themselves, or break apart and scatter like clouds. Throughout her investigations, the artist is guided by her fascination with the dual nature of the painted surface: repository of matter, and metaphor for space.

The title of the exhibition - RIFT - places particular emphasis on the paintings’ structural underpinnings. Space twists: figure and ground conflate and separate. In places, front and back meld like a Mobius strip. Suggestions of subject matter – Americana, natural phenomena, cosmology, weather maps,calligraphy and the primordial – seem to blend at junctures, becoming traces of their former selves. In this connection, Stephen Maine writes: “Pictorial fact is implied rather than stated, tapping into the part of the viewer’s brain engaged with becoming rather than being. The opposite of illustration, [Heidenheimer’s] work pursues the phantom image.”

Born in Gainesville, Florida, and raised in St. Louis, Kylie Heidenheimer has attended residencies at the Blue Mountain Center, Millay Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Byrdcliffe Artists Colony and the Anderson Center. She has had recent solo shows at Ohio Northern University (catalog) and Columbia University’s Italian Academy. Her work has been included in group shows and flat files at Pierogi, Condeso Lawler Gallery, PS122 and Sideshow Gallery in New York as well as other venues nationally. Heidenheimer has an MFA from Hunter College and BFA from Washington University. She lives and works in Manhattan.