Thilo Heinzmann

Heinzmann's works are analytical, but theirs is a hermetic questioning that concerns itself with intrinsic formal issues: this is not a 'networked' painting. He approaches these issues with the eye and the heart of a connoisseur, working towards an understanding of the universal that is formulated in the studio-laboratory, detached from particulars of time and place, as well as extrinsic social, political or economic issues.

Thilo Heinzmann attended Städelschule in Frankfurt from the early 1990s in the class of Thomas Bayrle. During that time he also assisted Martin Kippenberger. A significant voice in a generation of German painters scrutinizing the medium and its history, his inventive, precise works are driven by an inquiry into what painting can be today. Using chipboard, styrofoam, nail polish, resin, pigment, fur, cotton wool, porcelain, aluminum and hessian, Heinzmann has for the last twenty-five years worked on developing new paths and an unique visual language in his practice. He is interested in the presence that each work creates, which is further enhanced by his paintings’ powerful tactile qualities. It invites the viewer to notions on some essentials: composition, surface, form, color, light, texture, and time. In 2018 he was appointed professor of painting at Universität der Künste in Berlin.