Florian Heinke

The German artist Florian Heinke uses black paint exclusively as a "radical medium" to lay the focus on emotion and the tension of everyday media and art production. The motifs of his paintings – found in newspapers, magazines or digital media – are of transient matter as well as defined by lasting impressions in an affective way. In his paintings he includes spectacular, sarcastic, trivial as well as obscene image production without any restraints to provoke a viewers reaction and subsequently an attitude.

He rearranges iconographic symbols of pop culture and transforms their meanings towards apocalyptic, cynical or even morbid strength. The blank canvas in contrast to the black paint emphasizes a kind of insistence, which captivates the viewer’s attention according to the idea of black pop art.

Beyond that Heinke puts the spotlight on a general examination of the art market and its mechanisms. With a high degree of irony he stretches his role as an artist. What first seems to be as a big gesture of a marketing strategy is rather to be read in the context of intensive artistic discussions about valuation, autonomy and socio-political issues.

Florian Heinke (born 1982) lives and works in Frankfurt, Germany.