Daniel Heidkamp’s second exhibition with the gallery consists of representational paintings centralized around the themes of movement and light. Rendering scenes from many different locations, their common theme is a trembling tension between the past and present. Moving across the color wheel, nuances are based on the natural world and then stretched beyond it into a place of pure pigment, buzzing neon, and the complete spectrum illuminated during wild sunset.

Daniel Heidkamp is an observer creating renderings of dynamic atmospheres. In his travels and research the artist seeks out places with art historical significance, vibrating with what he terms as “art energy”. These sites are well-springs for art and culture, which Heidkamp taps into in order to keep them flowing. He enhances situations which can appear as prosaic, bringing out their supernatural aspects. Including ephemeral details like a setting sun or passersby strolling through the image, the different scenarios are headed towards the prospective with forceful motion, thus portraying real tears in time. The here and now is seamlessly connected with past and future.

Heidkamp’s conceptual use of color augments the actual. He moves through the visual spectrum echoing the significance Pythagoras saw in the “magic seven”, lingering longer on certain hues to explore them fully. Using color blocking, monochrome, and saturated tones to construct his compositions, he conveys simplicity, peacefulness, starkness and purity. The pigments still function like nature reminding the viewer of the normal visual field, though pushing beyond it into a world that can only be occupied by painting.

The practice revolves around an ekphrastic approach. Viewing these locations as expressions of their own, Heidkamp uses the artistic medium of painting to convey the artistic concept of their energy as subject. Translating this energy onto the canvas, he highlights the layered aspect of reality, merging the here and now with history and future. In his process of turning plein-air sketching into large-scale oil compositions, Heidkamp manages to portray matter to appear as more than when it is perceived on its own.

Daniel Heidkamp (b. 1980) lives and works in New York. He received his BFA from School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA in 2003. Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Half Gallery and Pace Prints, the group exhibition “Talking Pictures” at The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, and at Almine Rech Gallery curated by Bill Powers. DAP is including his work their upcoming book, a survey of landscape painting.

A catalog is published with the exhibition.