Paper-Geology. In his most recent works Wolfgang Heuwinkel no longer treats paper as a carrier of objects. To him the material is no longer the serving element of a future creative act still to be performed on it but the artist elevates it, as if emancipated, to being the object of creativity itself – with the stringent reduction to the structure and essence of the paper becoming the key to an impressive vastness and virtuosity of the material space for artist and beholder alike. The creation process of these works of art made of cellulose and pulp is apparently an analogy to the metamorphosis of the material being used: the dissolution and decomposition of wood into cellulose in a chemical process is followed by the plastic reshaping of the dissolved material in the artistic work process. The softened cellulose is pressed, kneaded, torn, flocculated and partly coated by pulp. After renewed solidification it forms the relief of a plastic landscape in an interplay between light and shadow. Caught in the microcosm of the monochrome material the eye of the beholder sinks into the vastness of pictorial spaces as nature creates them in wind- driven sands, in the rigidity of arctic ice and in the corrosion of rocks of mountain landscapes. But the works also reveal the inner coherence of such landscapes. The primal force, the emphasis on the elementary, the original facets of landscapes that was already expressed in Wolfgang Heuwinkel’s series of “torn watercolours” is being consistently continued here.
These works make you sense the more profound meaning of landscape. Life, growth and decline are perceived by the finely tuned antennas of our senses.
With this association to natural spaces the artist in a way succeeds in “healing” his material: What was decomposed and dissolved in the chemical process is now brought back into its original, organic context – the natural environment.
The consequence of this plastic shaping logically leads to the uniqueness of the sculpture. Like the tectonic forces in nature the artist liberates the material from its immediate context without, however, giving up the underlying unity. In this way, rigid monolithity intermeshes with corroding surface structures in the sculptures while crumbling, decomposing layers form plastic density and sculptural integrity. In this process, the artist’s empathy and know-how of the material evoke an aesthetic quality of its own which however, never places itself above the laws inherent in the material.
Dr. Wenzel Jacob Director of the “Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland“, Bonn, 1995