Independent 2026: Hannes Heinrich

For the series corner I–VII, Heinrich begins each painting with a frottage taken directly from one corner of his studio. The transfer functions less as documentation than as a spatial sketch and physical point of departure for the painting process.

The vertical seam running through the works refers both to the architectural edge where two walls meet and to a folded interruption repeatedly activated within the image. Each painting is structured around the idea that a corner always contains two sides and two possible readings of space.

The work reverses spatial hierarchies: the edge becomes the center. What usually remains peripheral, the meeting point of walls or the overlooked limit of a room, is moved into focus and treated as the primary site of the painting.

Layered gestures and translucent forms move across the surfaces like accumulated traces of light. Organic elements appear less as motifs than as temporary projections gathering over time.

Rather than depicting space, the paintings attempt to produce it. The surface becomes a site of folding and interruption that moves from flatness into depth and through the corner into spatial openness.

The accompanying plaster sculptures extend this logic into physical space. Cast from corners in his home and embedded with bottles, the works function simultaneously as architectural fragments and containers. Cracked surfaces and irregular seams give the objects the appearance of small tectonic fields shaped by pressure and repair.