DANIEL HEIDKAMP

Rendezvous

Artist Reception: September 3rd, 5-8 PM
September 3rd - October 1st, 2022

Click HERE for a checklist

Daniel Heidkamp’s solo debut in Los Angeles remixes many of his previous artistic excursions be it Cannes or San Simeon or Central Park brought together now as “Rendezvous,”  his fourth exhibition with half gallery since our inaugural presentation in 2013.

This group of new oil paintings expands the artist’s purview to emphasize how some painting motiffs of the Fauvists and Post-Impressionists were utilized by film makers in French Cinema and Hollywood.  

Heidkamp began this exploration when he participated in a group show at Blum & Poe Los Angeles two years ago. For his 2020 painting “Psycho Barn”  he depicted Cornelia Parker’s monumental sculpture of the Norman Bates’ Psycho house sitting atop The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Heidkamp had long been fascinated by Hitchcock’s decision to use an Edward Hopper painting as inspiration for his famous horror movie home and here was Parker stealing back the imagery for art’s sake. 

Below are a few insights from Daniel Heidkamp about the overlaps of visual fiction, art history and his own travels, more specifically how they all coalesce:

My painting "Stripes" is partly inspired by the boatyard scene in "And God Created Woman" (Bridgette Bardot's breakout film).  In the movie what appears as a typical boat landing in Old Saint-Tropez, I re-imagined it as the moment when the colorful stripes are being painted along side sailboats, with a spot of morning coffee, or evening wine, bringing a dash of Paul Signac-esque color to the otherwise rough and tumble harbor.  

"Cannes" uses the beach scene from Hitchcock's "To Catch a Thief" as the jumping off point, in the distance is a view of the "Old Town" (Le Suquet) before it was blocked by high-rise hotels as it is today, and some colorful sailboats whirling around in front of the Maritimes-Alps mountains, alluding to artists who worked there as varied as Renior, Picabia, and Picasso .  Under the umbrellas appears various beach emphera including what could be a vintage copy of the original novel "To Catch a Theif" and a tantalizingly unattended jewel, while the viewer contemplates whether to snatch it, you notice the camera is always watching. 

The interior in “Bonjour Tristesse” is inspired by the beach bungalow as seen in Otto Preminger's film of the same name.  The scene captures a quite moment at the end of a day near the Mediterranean water, with the fading light illuminating the room with an almost noir sensibility,  illuminating the fauvist painting on the wall bringing the theme full circle. 

“Arles” depicts the garden of the sanatorium where Vincent Van Gogh was taken after he famously sliced his ear. Van Gogh painted this garden several times, and while his renditions of courtyard (which I was able to visit this spring) strikes a gloomly tone, I wanted to embue the scene with a more  joyful and colorful mood, as if predicting the fauves which he would come to inspire. 

To bring some California vibes to this series, I painted the fountains of “Hearst Castle”.  San Simeon is in some ways America's answer to the Castles of the old world , with  classical sculpture and over flowing architecture and gardens, and of course this location is the inspiration for Xanadu in “Citizen Kane.”

“Cap Croisette” is a look back at an earlier phase of this series inspired by the Calanques near Marseilles. These rocky inlets offered inspiration to Cezanne and Braque, and here I exploded the scene into  a wild painterly sunset. Notably this particular rock formation was used as a backdrop to some pivotal scenes in the recent movie “Stillwater.”

For inquiries email erin@halfgallery.com