Caspar Heinemann

Between panic attacks + making out, Caspar Heinemann’s Distant Clinical Entity at Outpost

10 August 2017

Caspar Heinemann presented solo exhibition Distant Clinical Entity at Norwich’s Outpost, which opened July 28 and is running to August 20. 

Caspar Heinemann, ‘Distant Clinical Entity’ (2017) Installation view. Courtesy the artist + Outpost, Norwich.

Heavy and light physicality’s play out in the almost-bare room, which includes a number of crop circle drawings, love poems and appropriated then re-purposed toy police vehicles, which attempt to explore the in-between of spaces, like panic attacks, making out and dairy intolerance, among many others.  

The Berlin-based writer and artist recently published new poetry ‘I like scaffolding as much as the next attempt to create order’ on AQNB.

Caspar Heinemann’s Distant Clinical Entity solo exhibition is on at Norwich’s Outpost, running July 28 to August 20, 2017. 

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‘I like scaffolding as much as the next attempt to create order.’ New poetry by Caspar Heinemann

8 June 2017

I like scaffolding as much as the next attempt to create order

 

what are all those things that have apparently happened
              somewhere? the repetitive strain injuries of history –
to demonstrate on a personal and political level can someone
or you show me the way to my pre-historic bones? I am yet somehow enough
full of beer and your carpal bones on the back of some of my skull
tender in public that hate crime is an almost imperceptible
shimmer on the horizon of this u-bahn station, I estimate
that feeling is at least a vertebrae or purple clavicle, so i give
thanks to the tongue of the dawn choir. chaotic good burns the streets,
chaotic neutral stains the sheets, it’s not not reverent it’s a feeling
     refracted fuck shit up
        politic of snuck, dialectical glamour, sideways glimmers at the sideways
            glances shiny plastic chandelier branches – fuck heterosexuality’s matt
gloss, municipal pheromones cut with talc –
here everything is tilted tit for gilded
tat; decorate the use away, etch sweat and melt into the crisis of feeling’s
brittle solution: a minor gateau, i stopped being afraid of aviation
catastrophe and now use my time in the air to jump at the sun,
assess my place on the Beck suicide ideation scale, address
the state of my nation’s blood circulation – my praxis
is camp hatred i.e. i do not want to make anything
that would not make people think I would not work with the Zabludowicz,
i swear and it’s the funnest option,
the real champagne is always claiming ecstatic
agency in this vacuum that we’re all just trying to sleep sitting up in
a comfy yet stylish eyemask, none work with left pleasure.
the chronic mental health thing which affects [insert multiple objects]
             is, like ‘a letter from the state’, apparently not who i am, which is
lucky but discouraging journey work – back to the drawing board to scrub
the cave wall clean of fortune’s misplaced fire again, dye a flag night
                                        with the charcoal from my burnt down spare rib
But i am partially what I am, among other fallacies: contemporary
artist on budget flight between european countries, 20-
something pragma-gendered animal sad about accidents of
spilt hormones and adrenaline junkyard chemical contamination   
communist poet doubting the politics of that distinctly
worn opulence but still blaming the moon, i avoid anything
that scares me out in the great unwild so i can subject myself
to it under laboratory conditions, bandage the fag ash under my skin
on my own terms, science can be fun and holy blood fiction,
experimental collectivised endorphins, it’s funny
how even these small baroque unpleasures could be ripped away,
used against me, against me like my funny use of funny, queer, impending
harsh irony and nothing taken for granted under current climate
conditional lenses fucked against the stained glass of the public
sphere, give me irreverence or give me death
or both whatever i don’t care which, i just really care
for obnoxious joy, hyacinths dainty by the hearth
               sometimes I am asked who the work is for
and the answer is it is for nobody having to work but
some days, like tonight, the answer is just if you know you
know you don’t have to lie to me, i know
you’re telling the truth, subterfuge
      evades everything these days via
the opacity of everything all at once sober
libations to this silly thing i call a self flitting
disposable during the light
touch approach to life
found after declining
demented hops and the strobe of public life
repeatedly in favour of imaginary honeysuckle woven
a sunshade against the indigestion of iridescent light fixtures
i have no soluble solution i’m just learning to slice
                   the garlic thinner with age
give my real name to the state
as my monastic name, lying
to be true to save my
soul’s head (the
soul’s soul has no sense
of bureaucracy and therefore is
                              in no danger)
i am pure dark light and gently fried
rainbow chard, sesame oil, warm almond milk
accepting the risk that articulation is the problem
but i love it, so here is a model i built of it collapsing
some sub adequate recovery process, leaked formula
the escape plan looks impossible in this font so i’m planning
to rewrite it in perfect cursive in gilded invisible ink
then i will burn it to cook the best roast potatoes
see let it never be said i disregard materiality
the price of oil shoulders or multiple fingers
i fill the keyboard with all my leftover skin shit,
same as the next hoarder of sentient excess
some just trade it all in for gold
                         just like that all gone
in the blink of an eye the world vanishes
and reappears and vanishes and reappears
so many times every minute
and yet i am still so scared every single time
don’t fucking stop

 

 

 

 

Caspar Heinemann is an artist, writer and poet based in Berlin. They are interested in queer mysticism, experimental poetics, and countercultural aesthetics. Their first book, a homo-pastoral epic poem set in a near-future Thames Estuary, is forthcoming from Vile Troll Books

Caspar Heinemann is presenting solo exhibition Shared Personal Gnosis at London’s Almanac opening June 8 and running to July 9, 2017.

 

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Gathering Place 2 @ The Advisory, Aug 28

26 August 2016

The Gathering Place 2 group reading is on at London’s The Advisory on August 28.

Hosted by East London gallery ANDOR —where the first Gathering Place happened in February and aqnb reviewed here —is organised as part of a series of bank holiday events organised by Caspar Heinemann, Simon Pomery, and George Unsworth.

The press release comes accompanied by a sparsely punctuated text unravelling a softly anxious stream-of-consciousness, from a state of sleep into wakefulness along with all the worries of the world, and lists Heinemann, Holly Childs, Aurelia Guo, Hestia Peppe, and Lawrence Uziell as invited readers:

“…It’s the slumped up future it’s the eager past it’s geographical specificity it’s the circle of life and stolen bikes it’s trying to get my tongue so deep into my cheek that it reaches my heart…”

See the FB event page for details.**

Caspar Heinemann @ Gathering Place (2016). Courtesy the artist and ANDOR, London.
Caspar Heinemann @ Gathering Place (2016). Courtesy the artist and ANDOR, London.

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Gentle Dust @ Jupiter Woods, Aug 25

24 August 2016

Dorine van Meel and Rianna Jade Parker are presenting the first instalment of collective project Gentle Dust at London’s Jupiter Woods on August 25.

The evening will include spoken contributions by curator and co-founder of The Lonely Londoners Parker, as well as Isaac Kariuki, Imani Robinson and Caspar Jade Heinemann. There will also be a new video by artist van Meel and original music by Sami El-Enany.

The event has invited artists, writers and musicians to “come together to poetically imagine and stage the desertion of the ‘museum of modern art’ through performative readings and live music.” Questioning the way the institution presents itself as ‘global’, the live performances respond to the disillusion with the narratives being sold to us through the museum and the event plants itself within a time of special urgency to have voices heard in the here and now.

Visit the FB event page for more details.**

Dorine van Meel ‘Disobedient Children (excerpt)’ (2015). HD Video, 14’56”. Music, sounds + produced and performed by Jesse Osborne-Lanthier + Olle Holmberg. Courtesy of the artist.

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Pre-empty @ Evelyn Yard, Jul 29 – Sep 17

26 July 2016

The Pre-empty group exhibition is on at London’s Evelyn Yard, opening July 29 and running to September 17.

Curated by George Unsworth, the show includes work by Josh BitelliHamishi FarahCaspar HeinemannFelix Melia, and Gili Tal. There is little information on the press release aside from excerpts from a narrative text or poem that might be suggestive of the show’s possible themes: boredom, anxiety, danger, loss, and safety.

The press release states “give yourself more time to interpret safety spiritually and apply greater meaning to your future sacrifice. don’t be scared. think of family and complete the sentence, you are to truth what I am…”

See the Evelyn Yard website website for more details.**

Pre-empty @ Evelyn Yard, Jul 29 - Sep 17

Caspar Heinemann, ‘Untitled’ (2015). Courtesy the artist.

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Caspar Heinemann, nothing is the end of… (2016) exhibition photos

22 March 2016

London-based artist and writer Caspar Heinemann had a solo show at Vienna’s Kevin Space that ran from February 23 to March 20 titled nothing is the end of the world they made. Heinemann was the new curatorial collective’s first artist in residence at the space and they made a show by summoning and foraging the traces of material and semiotic references in the found objects that occupied the garage building at the former butchers, and all the invisible things produced in between.

A dragon is drawn on a plastic tarpaulin, which is held on a wall like a flag outside a child’s den by a piece of blue rope strung between a high corner and a large wooden stick. The stick is maybe what a child would find in a clearing and deem a big stick, similar enough to a tree but light enough to carry and bring back to base for building with. Accompanying the dragon are pretend flames, spray painted on in a way that might go a little like: ‘how do I make this fire in my mind exist on this flat surface’. And so in one wavy action, like a flame that waves in the air, fire is applied.

 Caspar Heinemann, nothing is the end of the world they made (2016) , exhibition view. Courtesy the artist and Kevin Space and the artist. Photo: Georg Petermichl
Caspar Heinemann, n​othing is the end of the world they made (2016). E​xhibition view. Photo by Georg Petermichl. Courtesy the artist + Kevin Space, Vienna.
The drawing is a scene of things, seen from above or across a timeline, rather than as a single encounter or moment. It is as though Heinemann has tried to show something that exists in their head that isn’t and won’t ever be in one physical space, a little bit like a magic trick. In a text written by the artist about the show sent to aqnb by the curators, they declare: “I can’t draw (a dragon a utopia) and the infrastructure that enables them.”

Opposite is a similar work, on more tarpaulin decorated with the same range of materials and mediums, this time showing at its core —or theme, as was the dragon in the dragon piece —a stone house whose stone chimney transforms the drawing tentatively but also clearly and intentionally into a tree house. The ‘tree house’ is the main item and it is bigger than its smaller surrounding illustrations, which act like flickering pieces of attention or memory that have been brought about by Heinemann thinking about a tree house.

The tree house and dragon (and its wave of fire to an extent, too) become objects in the show, but not necessarily in the room. They are indecipherably [but maybe tied down to]: thing, theme, trope, totem, illustration, figure-head and symbol —without the offer of actual meaning with which to read the show as a whole in. As a list, this feels somehow akin to Heinemann’s way of introducing statements in the aforementioned text: “Anyway, elsewhere, just, and because.”

Caspar Heinemann, n​othing is the end of the world they made (2016). E​xhibition view. Photo by Georg Petermichl. Courtesy the artist + Kevin Space, Vienna.
Caspar Heinemann, n​othing is the end of the world they made (2016). E​xhibition view. Photo by Georg Petermichl. Courtesy the artist + Kevin Space, Vienna.

The tree house piece is also held by a friendly wooden stick, and presumably then, in the space, the two paintings and their significant others (rope, sticks) create an inclusive arc space where the sticks act like a pair of arms outstretched, mirroring each other and forming a semi-circle. Heinemann has made it so you can’t feel clearly whether this is a pleasant semi-circle of safely chained memories or whether it is being held together, un-happily.

In the middle of the room is a wooden pallet, on its side. It is held tightly in the eye of its beholder because of an additional layer of thinner scarlet red wood added over its centre part. Equally bashful and vivid Heinemann has given nothing is the end of the world they made a middle, or a fire, or a bright memory in the centre of an exhibition view that gathers all that is foraged into one scene.**

Exhibition photos, top right.

Caspar Heinemann’s nothing is the end of the world they made was on at Vienna’s Kevin Space, running February 23 to March 20, 2016.

Header image: Caspar Heinemann, n​othing is the end of the world they made (2016). E​xhibition view. Photo by Georg Petermichl. Courtesy the artist + Kevin Space, Vienna.

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K.I.S.S. @ Generation & Display reviewed

28 April 2015

Out at the boundary of Travelcard Zone 2 and Zone 3 in London’s North Acton, an industrial space-become-artist studios restored with scrap materials by sculptor Henry Krokatsis houses a sunken concrete front floor with a roller door that’s now a gallery. Nestled between food production factories and reachable through a carpark, Generation & Display is about fifteen minutes walk from the nearest overground train station and probably presents the future for the group of artists exhibiting at its inaugural show, Keep It Simple, Stupid! (K.I.S.S.), running March 20 to May 2, if they choose to stay living in the UK capital (assuming they haven’t left already). Rising rents means fewer affordable work spaces closer to the city centre, with the artists that once lived in those areas having to consider moving further out, and with that a so-called ‘scene’ of connected artists that make up the 24 peers of artist and K.I.S.S. curator Charlie Woolley.

K.I.S.S. (2015). Exhibition view. Courtesy Generation & Display.
K.I.S.S. (2015). Exhibition view. Courtesy Generation & Display.

Herein comes an artwork (almost) each from a range of artists familiar to an aqnb audience, including but not limited to Harry Burke, Matt Welch and Leslie Kulesh, Takeshi Shiomitsu, Emily Jones and Mat Jenner. An invigilator tells me the exhibition is a “highly conceptual” one, but that’s a notion that’s perhaps hard to grasp on the basis of the press release that ends by simply stating: “They are friends”. But maybe there is a link between the 24 works, which include two untitled collaborative prints by Holly White and Ben Vickers, one of which announces, “London changes. London changes everything. Everything changes”. ‘Everything’ but the bad bits it seems, as Nina Wakeford’s ‘A Poster Made By Me in 1984’ (2012) echoes the endless cycle of urban decay and ‘revitalisation’ in the cluttered text of a red and white print behind glass saying “ARE YOU A gin sippin’ fox huntin’ union bashin’ strike breakin’ thatcher adorin’ youth exploitin’ future shatterin’ rapidly disappearin’ young conservative”. Three decades later something’s disappearing, but it wouldn’t be the Thatcherite thrust towards privatisation as temporary resident Jaakko Pallasvuo‘s work comes in an email to Woolley with his ‘15 New Works’ (2010). It features ten titles with short descriptions numbered in a list that includes, “3. So No One Told You Life Was Gonna Be This Way: I asked a person to stand behind me and watch while I browsed through their Facebook profile”.

If the Facebook backlash is to be believed, a person is only capable of having 15 intimate friends, but at least all of these 24 know each other and perhaps the reference to Facebook here is important. That’s not only due the networking platform’s loose notion of what ‘friend’ means, but because the K.I.S.S. artists are of a generation who probably utilise such social media platforms, in one way or another, both out of choice and necessity, especially given the peripatetic life of the precarious artist. London-born, recently New York- and now Berlin-based artist Hannah Black‘s three printed sheets host short texts of a pained and deeply emotional ‘Scripted Reality’, while East London resident and writer Huw Lemmey presents the ‘Cumdrain’ of political resistance in a grayscale photocopy of digital space inhabited by hand-drawn riot police.

Caspar Heinemann‘s pink-hued print of tools and a junkyard totem ‘Eat Fist!’ (2015) looks across to Jesse Darling’s ‘Masc Irade’ (2014). It’s suspended almost in the centre but just off of the room, its structural steel tubing stretched out and connected to pram wheels and held precariously together by a Poundland plastic bag. It looks part mobile shopping basket for the elderly, part heavy duty hand trolley, and a lot like the flimsy budget bag is working out on a Lat Pulldown machine. That, along with the scanners and cranes of Hana Janečková‘s ‘Life Support’ (2015) video, the Argos workstation and dead roses of Sam Griffin’s ‘Stroop’ (2012) and Paul Kneale‘s interactive and untitled compact disc microwave, make K.I.S.S. seem less a show about some friends and more about artists on the edge. **

Exhibition photos, top right.

The K.I.S.S. group exhibition is on at London’s Generation & Display, running from March 20 to May 2, 2015.

Header image: Hana Janečková, ‘Life Support’ (2015) @ K.I.S.S.. Install view. Courtesy Generation & Display.

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Piper Keys / Life Gallery / The Duck @ [ space ], Feb 7 – Apr 5

6 February 2015

London’s [ space ] gallery is bringing three consecutive exhibitions by artist-run spaces this month – Piper Keys and Life Gallery, and Berlin’s The Duck – running from February 7 to April 5.

Each gallery will present a two-week long show in [ space ]’s Annexe gallery, kicking off with Piper Keys, who brings a three-artist group show with Roger Ackling, Keith Farquhar and Lucy Stein, running from February 7 to February 22.

Almost as soon as Piper Keys’ show wraps up, Life Gallery takes over the space with There’s No Space in Space, a group show with Morag Keil, Caspar Heinemann and Kimmo Modig, running from February 26 to March 15, followed by Berlin’s The Duck, which will host a larger group show titled ‚dm‘,  with artists Hélène Fauquet, Nik Geene, Stuart Middleton, Naomi Pearce, Eidflo, Ellie de Verdier, Ryan Siegan Smith, and Veit Laurent Kurz, and running from March 19 to April 5.

See the [ space ] exhibition page for details. **

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