The exhibition Your Mouth Comes Second, Stefanie Heinze's first institutional showcase, unfolds as a journey into the ineffable—an exploration of the primordial forces that precede language and shape our perception of the world. Through a selection of recent works, the artist investigates tenderness and vulnerability as universal principles, weaving them into relational dynamics, the fusion of ancestral spiritualities with urban contexts, and a renewed alchemy between raw materials and form.

Drawing inspiration from alternative and counter-hegemonic knowledge, Heinze translates the unknown into painterly gestures that resist definitive answers. Her work is rooted in the "before" of language: a space of observation, intuition, and uncertainty, where the creative process becomes a ritual of appropriation and transformation. Here, the artist rejects the duality between abstraction and figuration, embracing a logic of coexistence—a "both-and" approach that dissolves opposition in a continuous interplay of negation and integration.

Heinze's practice begins with intimate, almost meditative drawings and collages that expand into large canvases filled with internal tensions. For her, drawing is a reflective, nearly ascetic gesture, while painting is an explosive act, a construction that feeds on recomposed fragments. Her images, suspended between metamorphosis and constant transformation, break down traditional boundaries, revealing a universe where "high" and "low" mingle, and visual and technical references mutually contaminate one another.

In the large canvases on display, ambiguous forms defy recognition: what seems to be a body might be food or an animal; familiar objects dissolve into intersecting, overlapping, and transforming planes of color. Marks and symbols emerge unfiltered, rejecting any hierarchy between intention and chance. Heinze does not seek to reassure the viewer; instead, she embraces chaos, dismantling formal certainties and reactivating the senses in a destabilizing synesthetic experience.

Through an act of sabotage against the excesses of rationality, the artist deconstructs language to restore the centrality of the body and its perceptions, proposing a sensory and fluid vocabulary. Confusion becomes a tool for reverse learning, rejecting categorization in favor of radical openness to change. For Heinze, this instability is not merely a creative practice but a political and intimate gesture—an invitation to rediscover experience in its mutable and multifaceted essence.

STEFANIE HEINZE (born in 1987, Berlin, Germany) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo (2012) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig (2016). Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Capitain Petzel, Berlin (2022); Petzel, New York (2020); Capitain Petzel, Berlin (2019); LC Queisser, Tbilisi (2019), among others, as well as in group exhibitions at Le Consortium, Dijon (2023); The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire (2022–23); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2022); Boros Foundation at Berghain, Berlin (2020); Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2020); Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf (2019); Saatchi Gallery, London (2018); and Tanya Leighton, Berlin (2017). Heinze's works are part of collections including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris; MAMCO, Geneva; Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; The Hepworth Wakefield, UK; Marguerite Hoffman Collection, Dallas; The Rachofsky Collection, Dallas; Mead Gallery at Warwick Arts Centre, UK; and the Delfina Collection, UK.

Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Torino

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Fino al 16 marzo 2025

Visit Stefanie Heinze - Your Mouth Comes Second