Art Gallery Opening-Double Vision: Photocentric Paintings by Richard Heipp

Event Date:
November 6, 2018 – 5:00 PM to November 7, 2018 – 8:59 PM

Location:
UNC Charlotte Center City

For over 40 years, Richard Heipp has investigated the dialogue between painting and photography in an attempt to equate the two media. His airbrushed paintings are intended to alter the viewer’s visual interpretation of a two-dimensional image by reexamining the differences between looking and seeing. These paintings require our conscious eye; they force us to be present in front of an artwork, reevaluate our perceptions of what we are seeing, and therefore become more aware of the inherent deception of casual observation. To see is to know. To look is not enough.

Heipp characterizes his paintings as being photocentric – these are not merely paintings of photographs, they are manually produced imitations of photographs or digital scans that explore the language and role of photography in contemporary culture. Heipp intends to curtail traditional assumptions about the separation of manual craftsmanship and mechanical production in order to recondition the viewer’s visual consumption of the artwork as image and the artwork as object. He reevaluates what we know as photography and what we think we know as painting.

Richard Heipp has been a Professor of Art at the University of Florida for 38 years. This exhibition is his first retrospective exhibition of work spanning more than 40 years and 10 series. For more information, watch this interview with Heipp, produced by Polk Museum of Art in conjunction with Double Vision: Photocentric Paintings by Richard Heipp, 1975-2018:

https://polkmuseumofart.org/media/heipp .

Or, visit Richard’s website: https://www.richardheipp.net/