Friedemann Heckel
Flügelschlag (wing beat)

In 2023, Berlin-based artist Friedemann Heckel opened his first solo show, „Open Doors“, at the Berlin based gallery Sweetwater. On view were large-format watercolors and objects based on photographs from a family album belonging to his grandparents. One of the watercolors depicts their wedding table in 1949, still without guests, void of people; other motifs refer to the grandparents’ house.

The bungalow in Hamburg-Sasel, completed in the early 1960s and showing references to the Bauhaus as well as Scandinavian design, represents the grandparents’ architectural attempt, to make a new beginning in postwar Germany. Shortly before the house was demolished in 2018, Friedemann Heckel removed the interior door handles and took them with him. For „Open Doors“, he recast them in unglazed porcelain, thereby releasing them from their function. The fragility of the material stands in contrast to the mechanics associated with the object. The motif of the lever handle can be read as a symbolic opening into a realm of memories, that is extended in the work „Flügelschlag“.

Across a range of media, Friedemann Heckel explores, how contemporary history is inscribed into objects and initiates an intergenerational dialogue about the identity of places. His watercolors, as delicate as they are technically accomplished, trace the fading memories of his grandparents’ house, asking how places are constituted and what remains when the built structure is no longer. In this sense, „Flügelschlag“ also seeks a point of contact with the past from the perspective of the present, opening a realm of potential between recollection and premonition.

Artist Friedemann Heckel lives and works in Berlin and is represented by Galerie Thomas Fischer and Sweetwater.