Andrea Heller (*1975) studied fine arts at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg and the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, subsequently worked in Paris on a studio scholarship and lives with her family in Evilard and works in Biel.

The artist works in a variety of media, with her ink and watercolour drawings – alongside objects and assemblages, silhouettes and text-based works – forming the basis of her oeuvre. Her formal vocabulary is neither consistently figurative nor truly abstract. Sensual and abysmal moods dominate – humorous, poetic, but also uncanny. A narrative meta-level always seems to be inscribed in the organic shapes and geometric structures; however, it is up to the viewer to spin their own story from them. She explains why her pictorial inventions prefer to move in the border area to the abstract as follows: “Abstraction captures a multiple potential. I provide a selection of possible themes or questions, which are then mixed with the viewer’s own ideas.”

Andrea Heller’s approach is characterised by the composition of her pictures. Certain gestures are repeated, larger forms are made up of smaller ones or follow a set of rules laid down by the artist. However, the motifs that emerge only emerge during the work process. Andrea Heller does not begin her work with the finished subject in mind, but approaches it by painting and drawing. The artist deliberately leaves the situation in her paintings and installations open. They can be landscapes or architecture, amorphous shapes reminiscent of science and nature. This results in works on paper that grow out of the organic and architectural and thus create a field of tension between the built and the naturally grown.

In her first solo exhibition at Galerie Bernhard Bischoff & Partner, Andrea Heller is presenting not only works on paper but also a large number of new glass objects. Sensual curves are reminiscent of feminine forms; one searches in vain for an “entrance” into the object, although the intricate shapes suggest that somewhere inside can be touched.