Reiner Heidorn

b. 1966, German

Biography

Reiner Heidorn is a contemporary artist currently residing and working in Bavaria and Weilheim, Germany. He is a German Modern Expressionist oil painter who works at a large scale, often with a botanic focus. Reiner Heidorn draws inspiration from the likes of Dieter Roth, Hans Hartung and Martin Kippenberger.

Born in 1966 in Bavaria, Germany, Heidorn’s large scale oil paintings engage in discussions about climate change by engulfing the viewer in exquisite details and botanic forms in relationships between resolutions in nature and digital technology. Transferring the pointillism of microscope images of plants and freshwater life forms, a glow forms from within his modern expressionist canvases. He continues a botanic style and series of narrative cells & neurons.

Portrait of Reiner Heidorn. Courtesy Studio RH.

Reiner’s thoughts on his art:

“For many years I’ve worked with oil-colors, and there are certain ways of handling them which are sometimes leading to undiserable mistakes, like bubbles, glossy surfaces, wet and soft parts,craters in the color. There are also common rules: Don’t mix the colors on the canvas, don’t use pigments without preparing them with oil and turpentine before, do not pour oil on the canvas. At a certain point in my development I had a strong wish to create something that transports the idea of disappearance, of dissolution. So I did everything possible wrong in oil painting just for the experience of having a borderless space with a universe of my own. I established all the mistakes into my own technique and work on every painting with a yearn to dissolve myself and all the negative surroundings.”

Heidorn ́s technique creates a certain depth and space in a very emotional expression with his dark green canvases. Thousands of tiny elements, close and far suggests a never ending universe, a forest, a lake – it makes the viewer hold his breath, looking for a light or a path to escape. These massive often very large monochrome oil paintings are spreading a religious-like seriousness and a selection of this series has a vibration as the dark purple Rothko paintings in his famous chapel installation. Dissolutio – disappearance, Reiner Heidorn calls his bio-divisionist painting style. It makes the experience of nature tangible. Once we have lost ourselves in the microscopically smallest, we now step back and the whole universe becomes visible, catching us in their plasma flows, in flowing movements, wraps us in complete dissolution.

Heidorn is a self-trained autodidact painter and has exhibited across the globe since roughly 2006 – 2007 up to today. Reiner Heidorn has mostly exhibited across Germany, but has also featured in group and solo shows in the United States of America, France, Dubai, Austria and Taiwan. Heidorn features in prominent private and public collections such as the Freistaat Bayern Collection or the Museum Weilheim, Germany.

Artworks

Reiner Heidorn, Woodland delusion, 2019. Oil on canvas – 240 x 190 cm. Courtesy the artist.
Reiner Heidorn, Wishing Waters, 2018. Oil on canvas – 190 x 240 cm. Courtesy the artist.
Reiner Heidorn, Wildlight, 2020. Oil on canvas – 170 x 200 cm. Courtesy the artist.
Reiner Heidorn, Wet Wilderniss, 2019. Oil on canvas – 160 x 120 cm. Courtesy the artist.
Reiner Heidorn, Wet Grass Night, 2018. Oil on canvas – 180 x 240 cm. Courtesy the artist.
Reiner Heidorn, Tadpolecycle 1, 2019. Oil on canvas – 150 x 180 cm. Courtesy the artist.