[Reader-list] www.tank.tv : Alexander Heim : 1st - 14th February 2009

[Alice O'Reilly]

*tank.tv is pleased to present a selection of work from Alexander Heim
including: Costa, Three Seasons, Untitled (Dog), Grand Walk and Matalan. *

"(Heim's) new film Costa (2008) tracks the daily activities of pigeons at a
busy coffee shop, following one bird scratching about the feet of commuters,
another skittering across a marble floor and a third bracing itself against
the wind in a concrete ledge, solemn as an eagle. With painstaking care they
hunt for the scraps between glinting metal chairs, clamber up gigantic steps
and outwit oblivious shows. The look faintly ludicrous but supremely
resourceful. The birds perspective translates familiar surrounding into
foreign territory; a station concourse gleams like an immense frozen lake,
its menacing cashpoint the mouth to hell; the complicated shadow of a
railing is not a reminder of an environment shaped by caring human hands but
a welcome rush-hour haven. In a city planned with no thought of pigeons as
its users, these benighted tacticians are transcendent. (..)

Heim strips away the literalness of everyday life, revealing the mysteries
contained in the most commonplace. It is no coincidence that he selects the
least loved of all birds to be the focus of this lyrical inquiry. The
ubiquitous pigeon is emblematic of those inconsequential things that
surround us, the routine stuff that so often goes unexamined. the result is
no dour pronouncement by the artist on the fate of the dispossessed but a
witty celebration of existence on the margins. The birds come across not as
pitiable outcasts but as profound seekers after truth; driven by some
internal compass they make their own way in the city, discovering their own
paths, becoming poets of their own acts."
*Kate Forde, Frieze, November 2008. *

Alexander Heim studied at the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste Hamburg,
gaining a diploma in fine art in 2004, before completing an MFA at
Goldsmiths College, London in 2006. Recent exhibitions include: 'Doves' at
doggerfisher, Edinburgh; Feeling gave way to structure, The approach E2,
London; Nought to Sixty, ICA, London and Drei Jahreszeiten (Three Seasons),
Galerie Karin Guenther Hamburg. Alexander Heim currently lives and works in
London.

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Alice O'Reilly
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Now showing:
Alexander Heim
1st - 14th February 2009

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