Kati Heck Artworks, Paintings and Exhibitions at the Saatchi Gallery

Kati Heck approaches painting as a cacophony of pre-fab languages. Her canvases give the illusion of collage: stylistically blending photorealism, illustration, cartoon, and expressive painterly gestures, and incorporating their associative references of porn, instructional manuals, humour, and art history. Her works are grounded in both formalism and fiction. Influenced by comics, mystery novels, and film, each painting plays out a possible narrative, using compositional elements to create suggestive links between her visual descriptions.Two nearly naked, life-size men are looking at us. The expressions on their faces can say or mean anything. Is it arrogance, disinterest, or plain boredom? One is sitting on a chair, legs stretched out on a barstool. The other is leaning toward his friend. Or is it his friend? And what's wrong with the hand of the seated man? It looks like blood is being tapped from his fingers into weird objects.

Katie Heck is often the protagonist in her work: she is the good fairy who, with her work and aura, offers to her fellows a magical potion meant to engender a change in their manner of thinking. Katie Heck’s work seems constructed from the colourful innocence of childhood. Aside from the often masterly painted and drawn figures, there also appear various comic-book heroes with whom she grew up. They play the role of propitious spirits, and exercise a positive influence on the viewer’s human brain. In addition to Lurchi and Yps, the figure and stories of Alfred Hitchcock inspire Katie Heck to put in train her own detective tales.She asks herself questions about everyday life, about society and its lack when it comes to thought processes. Through her paintings and drawings she wishes to overcome this inertia. In drawings and paintings, the artist herself along with friends and family members are presented with feet set in concrete blocks, with gloves to protect their hands from external “dangers”, with mouths also covered by face masks.Katie Heck is often the protagonist in her work: she is the good fairy who, with her work and aura, offers to her fellows a magical potion meant to engender a change in their manner of thinking. Katie Heck’s work seems constructed from the colourful innocence of childhood. Aside from the often masterly painted and drawn figures, there also appear various comic-book heroes with whom she grew up. They play the role of propitious spirits, and exercise a positive influence on the viewer’s human brain. In addition to Lurchi and Yps, the figure and stories of Alfred Hitchcock inspire Katie Heck to put in train her own detective tales.