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ampersand international arts is thrilled to announce two solo exhibitions opening Friday, January 31st, 2020 6pm-9pm, welcoming back curator Tracy Wheeler featuring Proof by Thomas Heinser & Now That My Ladder's Gone by Deirdre White. With a loose thread of human evolution connecting them, Heinser's photographs & White's paintings each create windows into a possible past, present & future of the world. The exhibitions will be open Thursdays & Fridays 12pm-5pm or by appointment until February 28th. Closing reception Saturday, February 29th 1pm-4pm.


Proof
Photographic installation by Thomas Heinser

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Susan Sontag famously wrote, “All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s)mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.” Thomas Heinser’s photographic installation, Proof, points to a slightly different conclusion. By showing 330 images of people of all ages (some of whom are the same person at different ages) time doesn’t so much melt as slip and slide, swoop and circle. By photographing his sitters annually, Heinser creates an attenuated record of the idiosyncrasies of individual transformation which presented together in a wall-sized grid, become notes in a symphony about time, relatively and the position of the observer.


Now That My Ladder’s Gone
Paintings by Deirdre White

Great oil painters, of which Deirdre White is one, dance with their medium and thus expose their own viscera in the drag of a line or the mix of a color mostly seen by surgeons or first responders. White’s subjects, the mobile contraptions built by un-homed people, gain historical grounding though her reference to the folds of cloth and bindings found in artworks by the old masters. Tarps, blankets and tents become togas, robes and table covers and the people, mostly unseen, transform into modern day penitents on an endless pilgrimage. Yet, there are no stations of the cross streets or hostels along the way to give meaning or shelter to their quest.

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Curator: Writer and convener Tracy Wheeler facilitates creative culture and community through her work as a fine art curator and director of content and curation for End Well, a dynamic annual gathering of individuals committed to generating human-centered, interdisciplinary innovation for the end of life experience. She co-directs SATELLITE OF. LOVE a project aimed at presenting Bay Area mid-career artists, regularly curates at ampersand international arts and is on the advisory board of Southern Exposure. 

Thomas Heinser
Born in Germany and based in San Francisco, California, Thomas Heinser combines the precision of a commercial photographer and the specificity of a fine artist to his portraits of people and aerial photographs of intentional and unintentional man-made landscapes. He studied at the Fachhochschule and Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf, with Joseph Beuys at the helm. He has had solo exhibitions at Gallery 16 and Goethe Institute, San Francisco, Haus 1, Berlin, Kunst Haus Lempertz, Köln and the Museum Voswinckelshof, Dinslaken, Germany.

Deirdre White
A San Francisco native, Deirdre White spent most of her first decade in Berkeley California, before her family relocated to suburban Philadelphia. She received a BFA in Painting and Drawing from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and an MFA in Studio Art from UC Davis, where she worked with Wayne Thiebaud and Squeak Carnwath.  She has exhibited throughout California as well as Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, Texas, and Oregon. Her work has been featured on the album covers of John Dwyer (of Thee Oh Sees), The Sandwitches, and Sarah Beth Nelson, as well as on WHYY in Philadelphia’s Friday Arts segment.  In 2018 Deirdre was awarded the Jon Imber Painting Fellowship at Vermont Studio Center. She is currently a Lecturer at UC Davis and adjunct at City College of San Francisco in painting and drawing. She has lived in the Mission on the border of Potrero Hill since the late 1990s. She is married to the musician and songwriter Tom Heyman.

ampersand international arts is a contemporary art gallery located in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood. Founded in 1999 by Bruno Mauro 
this space provides artists, local and international, emerging and mid-career,
a platform for communication and conversation that is open, unique and inspirational. ampersand international arts is committed to collaborating with artists, curators and art enthusiasts in promoting an intercultural dialogue surrounding art. Our goal is to help build bridges between conceptual and commercial art within an experimental and inclusive environment.

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Proof
Thomas Heinser
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Now That My Ladder's Gone
Deirdre White

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Curated by Tracy Wheeler
 

Closing Reception:
Saturday, February 29th
1pm-4pm
 

Exhibition Dates:
January 31 - February 28, 2020
 

Gallery Hours:
Thursdays and Fridays
12pm-5pm
or by appointment

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