Swetlana Heger

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Swetlana Heger


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Swetlana HegerBorn in 1968 in Brno, Czech Republic. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Education

1996-1998 Post Graduate Studies in Video and Communication Art, Musashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan

1990-1995 MFA in Painting and Graphics, University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria

Solo Exhibitions

2009 COMA Centre for Opinions in Music and Art, Berlin, Germany

2008 Effearte, Milan, Italy

Kalmar Nya Konstmuseum, Kalmar, Sweden

Muse des Beaux Arts, Dole, France

2007 galerie frank elbaz, Paris, France

Thierry Goldberg Projects, New York, USA

COMA Centre for Opinions in Music and Art, Berlin, Germany

Kunstverein Assenheim, Assenheim, Germany

2006 La Salle de Bain, Lyon, France

Haus Am Waldsee, Berlin, Germany

2005 Artists Space, New York, USAKnstlerhaus Palais Thurn & Taxis, Bregenz, Austria

Ibidprojects, London, UK

Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, Germany

Galeria Javier Lpez, Madrid, Spain

2004 Ap, 4, Art, Geneva, Switzerland

2003 Velan, Torino, Italy

A9 Transeuropa, Vienna, Austria

2002 Kunstwerke, Berlin, Germany

Galeria Javier Lpez, Madrid, Spain

Ibidprojects, London

Herms Store, Friedrichstrasse, Berlin, Germany

2001 Chouakri Brahms, Berlin, GermanyMak Galerie, Museum Fr Angewandte Kunst, Vienna, Austria

Air de Paris, Paris, France

Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

Group Exhibitions (selection)

2008 Bare Market, Thierry Goldberg Projects, New York, USAAgency: Artists Subvert Advertising, McDonough Museum of Art, Youngstown StateUniversity/Ohio, USABass Diffusion Model, Fieldgate Gallery, London, UK

2007 If Water Crystal, Crystal Water, Ingalls Associates, Miami, USAConstructing New Berlin, The Bass Museum Of Art, Miami, USADeutsche Geschichten, Galerie fr Zeitgenssische Kunst, Leipzig, Germany

House Trip, Art Forum, Berlin, Germany


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View of the exhibition Swetlana Heger, Solo Shows & dj vus, Muse des Beaux-Arts de Dole, France,

2008, Muse des Beaux-Arts de Dole


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Swetlana Heger

Smoke (Libert Toujours)

2008Mixed media380 x 380 x 250 cmEdition of 2

Sara Sdergrd ; view of the exhibition Swetlana Heger - Smoke (Libert Toujours),Kalmar Art Museum, Sweden, 2008


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Swetlana Heger

Smoke (Libert Toujours)

2008Mixed media380 x 380 x 250 cmEdition of 2



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Swetlana Heger

Smoke (Libert Toujours) #2

2008b/w print on chrome de luxe paper, color frame121,4 x 169,4 cmEdition of 3



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Swetlana Heger

Smoke (Libert Toujours) #5

2008b/w print on chrome de luxe paper, color frame121,4 x 169,4 cmEdition of 3



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Swetlana Heger

Random Quotes (About Everything)

Exhibition view, galerie frank elbaz, Paris, 2007-2008


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Swetlana Heger


2007Mirror, painted frame

50 x 31 x 2,5 cm

Unique


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Swetlana Heger


2007

Mirror, painted frame60 x 120 x 4,5 cm

Unique


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Swetlana Heger


Exhibition view, galerie frank elbaz, Paris, 2007-2008


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Swetlana Hegers artistic work is set in the field of tension between art and every day aesthetics; in her

interventionist practice she combines aspects of the trivial and the sacred (and of high culture) with each

other, uncovering new links. Be it design, fashion or architecture by means of selective shifts of

context she removes the often purely aesthetic, commercial foil of reference from the things and objects

that she partly photographs, thus achieving a re-politicisation of previously purely aesthetic discourses.

Her Ornamental Remix #1-7series can be seen in this context. It consists of black-and-white photos of

the interior of a Gothic church that she visited in the Czech Republic. Only on closer inspection do we

notice that the ornamental elements are all made of human bones. This recycling process puts the

found material the bone finds in a new context of meaning as decoration. In her work, Hegertranslates the historical interior decor of the Gothic church in a renewed remix into modern pictures in

which the human skull and other remains become contemporary fetishes, as are being constantly

produced by western industries. What once was sacred becomes a commodity once and for all.

From the brochure published on the occasion of the group exhibition What We Bought, Camera Austria,

Kunsthaus Graz, Austria, 2007

Swetlana Heger

Ornamental Remix

2007b/w pigment print on chrome de luxe paper, color frame

62,5 x 92,5 cm each

Edition of 3


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Swetlana Heger

Ornamental Remix #1


62,5 x 92,5 cm

Edition of 3 + 1 AP


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Swetlana Heger

Ornamental Remix #2


62,5 x 92,5 cm

Edition of 3 + 1 AP


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Swetlana Heger has been taking photographs of bronze animal statuettes that

are scattered in parks, zoos, and defunct kindergartens throughout the eastern

part of Berlin. Theres a peacock with its plumage replaced by intricate metal

lacework, a pair of baby giraffes, a fierce goat, a cuddly bear, a trio of plumpchickens. Innocent as all the beasts seem, they guard a secret: theyve been

made from Stalins remains.

In 1949 the Stalinallee became the main drag in the socialist half of the city. A

giant bronze statue of the benevolent leader was eventually erected to crown and

commemorate the achievement. Upon Stalins death in 1961, it was urgent that a

new name be found for the boulevard. This time, however, party officials waged

on a name that was perhaps beyond opprobrium. They went with the much safer

choice of Karl-Marx-Allee. A choice so safe, a name so beyond reproach, that it

still stands today. But even after finding the perfect name for the street, there was

still the matter of that bronze monument. It stood like a bad reminder of Stalins

intolerance, of the magnitude of his crimes, surely, but also of the quiet

complacency of all those who had to pass by it everyday on their way to grim jobs

and scripted university lectures. The statue itself needed to be eradicated. And so it was brought down.

Unlike the images that censors and revisionists simply made go away whenever someone refused to toe the Partyline, there was the matter of the actual physical substance that made up the Stalin statue. The bronze was melted

and redistributed into all the animal figurines that Heger has been hunting down and documenting throughout Berlin.

These insignificant animals, tucked away in insignificant parks, quietly carry not only a bit of the historical narratives

of the last century but literally some of the material through which these narratives found physical form in the world.

These innocent and abandoned animals, like a big joke on History, have become its depository. Its like alchemy,

but in reverse. These are the cuddly forms where the narratives that we banked on with such hope go to die, adding,

as they say, insult to injury.

Excerpt from a text by Gean Moreno

Swetlana Heger

Animal Farm

2007Black & white pigment prints, colored frame

152,5 x 112,5 cm

Edition of 3 + 1 AP


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Swetlana Heger

The Walk of Fame (Knights and Knaves)

200610 b&w photographs, color frames : 42,5 x 52,5 cm

1 color photograph, framed : 62,5 x 72,5 cm

edition of 3 + 1 EA


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Vincent Pcoil

Swetlana Heger, Knight and Knaves

Press release for Swetlana Hegers solo exhibition at

La Salle de Bain, Lyon, 2006

Knights and Knaves the new set of photographs exhibited by Swetlana Heger at La

Salle de Bains, takes its origins in the rumours that are put about concerning well-

known artists. With its growing importance in the mechanisms of the culture

industry, art is attracting ever more media coverage; and for some of its

practitioners, at least, it has become a source of considerable income. This media

interest, stimulated by the buoyancy of the art market, has generated all sorts of

legends and gossip about artists' lifestyles, their supposed fortunes, their luxurious

possessions, the extraordinary number of assistants required for the completion of

their projects (whose production costs are staggering), and so on. "More is more"

seems to have become the adage of the age, and celebrity the ultimate aim of the

artistic enterprise.

A few decades ago, Andy Warhol stated that business was the highest

form of art. Today, it would seem that art has become the highest form

of business its new model. Art is the ideal of the modern company a

dematerialised entity, or a Nike-type design office that outsources the

entire production process. Like most of today's artists, in fact.

It used to be the case that one of the artist's natural roles involved

projecting an image of what art was supposed to be. Artists embodied

the image people had of them; which meant that they were seen as not

being like other people. This was the case, for example, with Van Gogh,

the first of the visionary artists. And it was also the image that Jackson

Pollock represented, for a time. As the objects created by artists

became more and more abstract and more intimately individual the

image they projected of themselves took on more and more

importance.

But the abstract character of art has ceased to be compensated for by

a particular image that sets apart the kinds of artist who, like Warhol

and his successors, identify themselves as "entrepreneurs", and who

have made their public persona a part of their stock in trade. They have

turned into Dan Graham Inc., or IFP (Information, Fiction, Publicit), or

Swetlana Heger. There is nothing that makes them different from

other members of the public. A part of art's current problem stems from

the fact that there is no longer a public image of the artist to refer to.


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So whatis the image of today's artists, following on from the one that Richard

Prince's generation gave of themselves, with photos in magazines showing

Pollock at work, or Franz Kline in his studio? Does any of them perpetuate the

time-honoured image of the inspired bohemian? Representations of the artist at

work loom up out of the past like fading auras that of the painter or sculptor

alone in his studio, the solitary genius living on the margins of the social world. But

in what precise way does the everyday reality of a famous artist differ from that of

a designer or an international architect? Warhol's vision of the future (in which

each individual is famous for fifteen minutes) meets Beuys's utopia (in which each

individual is an artist). Everyone's "creative". By giving the modern artist's

individualistic values a positive spin, the economic world has ushered art into a

populist era. The image of the artist is now that of the man in the street. It hasmerged with that of creativity; and the memory of past art makes up the deficit, if

only by default.

Knights and Knaves takes its place, precisely, at the heart of this void. By

choosing to show images of computer-filled rooms in a possible evocation of

contemporary studios and the attributes of the business manager, which are the

same as those of the successful artist (the private plane, the briefing of an

assistant from behind a desk, or the external signs of wealth that correspond to

the function), these photographs illustrate a crossover between two worlds that

of art and that of business and reflect back, to those who look at them, their

own expectations about art.

"All the found images", explains Heger, "are based on myths, legends andrumours about successful artists. [] An artist in today's world is a constant

traveller, a manager, an estate agent In search of inspiration, artists go off to

distant isles to meditate. They learn to fly planes; they buy designer clothes and

have call-boys They don't come up with ideas by themselves, given that they're

always working on a number of important projects simultaneously; but they have

the wherewithal to pay assistants, and they use them as think tanks, computer

experts, etc."

The framed photographs, taken from image banks, have been rendered in black

and white (as opposed to Richard Prince's first "rephotographs", which were black

and white images photographed in colour). This procedure gives the source-

images a look of seriousness or documentary veracity that is lacking in theoriginals. The images are generic, and thus anonymous, awaiting legends (in both

senses of the word), like the coloured star on the opposite wall (which comes from

Los Angeles' Walk of Fame, with its palmprints of Hollywood stars.) The star is still

blank, still lacking a name an (abstract) image of the artist onto which one can

project oneself, and to which one can aspire. The artist as star, nabab celeb.


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Swetlana Heger

Playtime (SH & Purification Garcia, photographed by Marcus Gaab)

2005Lambda Print on Chrome de Luxe paper, mounted on acrylic glass and aluminum

140 x 167 cm

Edition of 3 + 1 AP


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Swetlana Heger

Playtime (SH & Adidas, photographed by Ali Kepenek)

2002Lambda Print on Chrome de Luxe paper, mounted on acrylic glass and aluminum

180 x 220 cm

Edition of 3 + 1 AP


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Documents

Swetlana Heger