The Thinking Eye

Recent Paintings

Galerie Nordenhake Berlin

The exhibition consists of a selection of his paintings from the last two years on both canvas and paper. His paintings are defined by dynamic geometrical forms—more or less in a state of deconstruction—and their intense sensory appeal. Both qualities can also be found in his architecture. Painting is an integral part of his extraordinary multilayered practice and Hecker describes himself as "an artist whose profession is architecture".
Certain paintings can be seen as further elaborations—on a rather abstract and lyrical level—of the lines of thought that emerge from his architectural projects whereas others suggest abstract landscapes. As with his drawings, his paintings are also a means to reinterpret the mathematical exactitude of geometry—transforming it into something open and organic. He is interested in the incompleteness and ultimate imperfection of a structure like the spiral. Hecker explored the Fibonacci spiral in its complexity in his sketchbook no. 5 from 1981-82, while he was conceiving the Spiral Apartment House. A painted sketch of the spiral from the book can be seen as an early version of the untitled painting with a red spiral from 2011, which is on view in the exhibition. The exhibition includes two of the forty-five sketchbooks that Hecker started in 1979. They illustrate how essential forms—like the Möbius strip, the spiral or the hexagon—from Hecker's complex architectural planning process re-occur in his paintings. The pages of these books allow for a close reading of Hecker's working process of visual investigation in which drawing, writing and painting are united.

Galerie Nordenhake Berlin