Heide Fasnacht

Seen from a certain perspective, or at a certain magnification, all that is solid melts into air -- or clouds of atoms, or drifts of luminous vapor. Bodies, whether of land, water, or flesh, are unstable aggregates; they are accidents, caught only by coincidence in forms we recognize. For several years, Heidi Fasnacht has been tracking the energy released when that familiar cohesion is ruptured, and the always-present world of particles in collision is made manifest. Thus her images, in two dimensions and three, of detonations, implosions, geysers, volcanoes, fireworks, ticker tape parades, sneezes … The drawings are meticulous but lively, heavily worked but crisp and fresh. They are based on photographs and executed in pencil, the strokes short and deliberate, though in some passages, the surface is smudged or scuffed. Patterns associated with various techniques in mechanical reproduction, including parallel hatchmarkers and raster dots, come into play. Sometimes in the black and white drawings – those of explosions at sea, for instance – the paper is treated as if it were an etching plate, or a stencil: it is stippled, scratched, pitted, even perforated. The colored pencil drawings of volcanoes, on the other hand, can be as silky as a finely worked tapestry, and as luxuriant.