NEW YORK, NY.- Meet Berlin-based Stefanie Heinze, the next artist to present new work at Petzel’s recently inaugurated parlor floor gallery at 35 East 67th Street. This exhibition, which will include small and large-scale paintings and drawings, is forthcoming.

In Stefanie Heinze’s playful figurative paintings, abstracted and ambiguous forms become recognizable as unexpected subjects. From disembodied body parts, to everyday objects, to animal-like figures, her subjects melt into colorful, fantastical backgrounds to create vivid visual worlds which reveal an interplay between high and low culture.

Heinze’s brightly colored, imaginative compositions are cleverly subversive in their details and symbolism. They convey rebellious but humorous social critiques, complemented with equally witty, lyrical titles. Although considered a member of the abstract expressionism and the Leipzig schools of painting, Heinze is categorically unique, as she explores new forms and modes of representation. The origins of her inventive paintings can be found in her intimate, delicate drawings, which capture and depict just as much liveliness on their small scale as they do on the gigantic canvasses.

“My painting is a safe space,” says Heinze, who is joining the Petzel roster and who is currently part of the group exhibition Quadro at the Deichtorhallen Hamburg. “If everything else stopped functioning, it still works. It's a place one goes where things extracted from everyday life can do what they want.”

Since graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig, Germany, Heinze has exhibited at Capitain Petzel, Berlin (2019); LC Queisser, Tbilisi (2019); Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf (2019); Mary Boone Gallery, New York (2018); Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London (2017), among others. She has participated in numerous group shows including at the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2020); Saatchi Gallery, London (2018); Tanya Leighton, Berlin (2017); Good Press, Glasgow (2016); basis, Frankfurt (2015). Heinze’s works are in the collections of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden and the Marguerite Hoffman Collection, Dallas. She lives and works in Berlin. In 2014 she completed her studies in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig, with interludes at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo and the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Maine, USA.