Charline von Heyl: Snake Eyes

Combining humor with references to literature, pop culture, metaphysics and personal history, German-born, New York- and Marfa-based painter Charline von Heyl (born 1960) creates paintings that offer in her words, a new image that stands for itself as fact. This catalog is published on the occasion of her show at Washington DC’s Hirshhorn Gallery and Sculpture Garden, her largest US museum survey. The catalog was designed in close collaboration with von Heyl, with a new painting created specifically for the cover and a rare Z-fold binding that effectively separates the images and texts into two connected yet independent, mirror-image books. New York Magazine’s Jerry Saltz included this catalog in a list of his favorite recent art books, writing: this beautifully designed book is devoted to the artistic fireworks and optical accomplishments of … von Heyl, whom one critic has called ‘the most exciting American painter right now.’ The charismatic intelligence pictured in these ever-changing, highly charged, intensely graphic, and profusely colored paintings may well convince you of that.