Katy Heinlein


My work explores a kind of absurd, un-sacred geometry—concerned with symmetry and balance, but peppered with maladroitness and humor. My sculpture utilizes color, gravity and tension, with taut suspended straps, carefully draped parabolas of silk, and slouchy curving planes of jersey. It is sensual and elegant, but with an abject droopiness, introducing a slightly awkward disruption of order.

These are playful, casual constructions, using the limitations of interior space—attached to or propped against the wall and floor. They are passively kinetic, swaying slightly from the movement of the air around them. They are modular, appearing slightly different in each installation, after my zhooshing, tugging, tucking, and balancing.

I'm interested in physical and emotional perceptions of color and light. Color theory—reflection, shadows. Nostalgia—video games, cartoons. Synesthetic associations with color—dusty, juicy, lurid, clean.

My work is firmly sculpture, though it parallels painting (stretcher bars, fabric, pigment) and fashion (the body, fabric and pigment). I am toying with and affectionately barbing hard-edge abstract painting and minimalist sculpture.