Wieteke Heldens: Paintings, Painthings and Paintthings

Opening reception: Saturday, June 11, 6 – 9 pm
Dates: June 11 & 12, June 18 & 19, and by appointment
Hours: noon – 6 pm

Flux Factory is pleased to announce an exhibition by Dutch artist-in-residence Wieteke Heldens. She will show drawings, installations, and paintings made at Flux during her six-month residency.

The artist’s debut solo exhibition includes paintings and what she refers to as “painthings” and “paintthings.” These works on canvas and paper hint at the conflicting desires to both suppress and emote raw desires and irrational needs.

Heldens grew up in an ice cream factory, and now she lives and works again in a factory. She wants to be a machine without feelings and emotions but she is not. Her works expose hardly disguised raw nerves: what we see in these paintings is someone trying to cope with existence. Heldens is consistently inconsistent. With each painting she reinvents herself, almost as if her life depends on it. Yet her works are never melodramatic, rather, they invite us to recognize ourselves and our own existential struggles.

Special thanks to Stroom Den Haag.