Middle Gate

Kati Heck uses the great diversity of imagery provided by the history of art to express her personal world of experience and imagination. Heck's paintings often resemble collages, because she tends to combine different styles of painting on one and the same canvas. With Heck, hyperrealistic images blend in seamlessly with cartoonish sketches or stylistic references to the history of art. Kati Heck mostly creates large paintings with colourful assemblies of figures, objects and symbols, which together seem to narrate some complicated story. With references to comic books, films and pornography, Heck is clearly inspired by popular culture, but her own experiences are a point of reference for her as well - the figures she depicts are usually modelled after people she met in her own life. Heck doesn't want the stories of her images to be understood at once; most important is the imaginative power of the paintings. "The more I tell you, the more the eye of the viewer will be directed and the fewer he or she can see".