Heidrun Rathgeb.
day01. is delighted to present Heidrun Rathgeb’s first solo exhibition in Australia, ‘Reverie and Oranges’. Rathgeb was born in Tettnang, Germany in 1959 and lives near the breathtaking views of Lake Constance.
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Two cups and saucers sit close, one’s shadow overlaps the other’s, they both puff up small exhalations of steam. Do the cups act as a kind of gravitational lens, to distort the pattern of the checked tablecloth they float over? Here is a double invitation, to sit down, perhaps pick up the cup, to imbibe the moment, or to just stand watching the steam hover. The viewer has arrived in Heidrun Rathgeb’s domain.
Heidrun’s work captures what I call these ‘moments of looking’ ― they study the sympathetic contiguities of scenes in domestic and landscape settings, where people, objects and place are held in a realm of time, a sleeper is warmly enveloped in pattern under the tender gaze of both the artist and now, us, the viewer.
Often in Rathgeb’s work we have a figure, or evidence there has been one, notably, in the coffee cups’ anticipation of guests, Ena’s shoes patient expectation of her return, the faint impression of a head on pillows or, more substantially, a shadow surprises a pair of legs. While these paintings are still, there are clues everywhere that movement is afoot.
Heidrun’s works, to borrow from Coleridge, are as ‘inaudible as dreams’, and in telling us this directly in her exhibition title ‘Reverie and Oranges’ she sets up both her painterly juxtaposition of reverie with the particular, here the example is oranges ― orange that word that conjures still-lifes, colour and the fruit itself in all its vibrancy.
Her work absorbs some serious gazing, the grain of colour is so sure in its harmonic progression, the dimension of her wooden panels might be a subtle homage to the icon, and all those delicious patterns ― the oranges doubling up in their role as duvet print and metaphoric cover for the sleeper and the sleeper’s dreams. In each of Heidrun’s works we are drawn into the luminous, the images with their alliterative motifs, often populated with thresholds of observations ― windows, doors ― invite us to stand and contemplate, to be in both her moments of looking and the present. Carol Jenkins, July 2024.
Press release.
Reverie and Oranges.
1 August –– 7 September.
Heidrun Rathgeb
Duvet with Oranges (via Degli Dei), Italy, 2024
egg tempera on Lime wood
22 x 16 cm
Heidrun Rathgeb
Oberzalim Alpe, 2024
egg tempera on Alder wood
16 x 11 cm
Heidrun Rathgeb
Alte Pinakothek, Winifred and Camille, 2024
egg tempera on Alder wood
17.5 x 14 cm
Heidrun Rathgeb
The Boat from Graven (Norway Hardanger), 2024
egg tempera on linen on Alder wood
14 x 17.5 cm
Heidrun Rathgeb
The Pink House, Bruton, 2024
egg tempera on Alder wood
14 x 17.5 cm
Heidrun Rathgeb
Shadowplay (Schattenspiel), 2024
egg tempera on Lime wood
14 x 17.5 cm
Heidrun Rathgeb
Hinaus ins Weite, 2023
egg tempera on Lime wood
14 x 17.5 cm
Heidrun Rathgeb
Myrtle Cottage, 2024
egg tempera on Balsa wood
10 x 15 cm
Heidrun Rathgeb
Kaffeestunde in New York, 2024
egg tempera on Alder wood
11 x 16 cm
Heidrun Rathgeb
Ena’s shoes in Bologna, 2024
egg tempera on Alder wood
17 x 14 cm
Heidrun Rathgeb
Oval Moon Rising, 2024
egg tempera on Alder wood
11 x 16 cm
Heidrun Rathgeb
Seagull Above Giudecca, 2024
egg tempera on linen on Alder wood
14 x 17.5 cm
Heidrun Rathgeb
Unser Raum ‘Our Space’, 2024
egg tempera on Alder wood
14 x 17.5 cm
