Angélique Heidler at sentiment

The paintings in Trust Economics begin on a surface already occupied. Instead of blank canvases, Angelique Heidler works on second-hand bedsheets, a material saturated with intimacy. Adorned with motifs such as the Brooklyn Bridge, New York City scapes, checkered patterns, superheroes and horses, they speak of teenage years in stuffy bedrooms, clammy hands, big dreams. Though disparate, these images are tied together by their relation to fantasy and projection: they evoke worlds imagined, desired, or longed for. Ideology enters the young body early. Dreams are not only nightly escapes but ideological frameworks through which ambition and self are formulated. What we dream of speaks just as distinctly of where we want to go as where we come from. Long before they are consciously articulated or even reflected in therapy, TV, pop culture and advertisement showed us what life will look like. Success and prosperity will follow from hard work, determination, and initiative, every obstacle can ultimately be overcome, and drama is never far away.

The works unfold through layering and interruption: Painterly gestures obscure, redirect, or suppress parts of the faded out underground, hard-edge stars and squares cut across it, objects such as jewellery, photographs, prints, medals, clothing, glitter are spread on top. There are contradictions in place: motifs of innocence are crossed by those of desire, branding, or erotics; the iconography of the American Dream is supplemented by portraits of Mao Zedong. On some of the works, like Remember the Time, these elements are very personal, such as the medals from swimming competitions young Angelique earned, her late grandma’s leather glove, or the photo of her meticulously lined up teddies and dolls family. On the self-portrait In the studio, her worn-out workwear merges into the body of an angry dude, eerily frozen in his expression. In Empire State of Mind, the glittery outline of a figure in a penthouse watches the city burn. A baby wearing a Bayer logo romper appeared in a vivid dream Angelique had, an image so prominent she decided to realize it. Sometimes the associative finds its way in, but the scrapbook-like aesthetics of these works is somewhat deceptive. While drawing on the visual languages of diaries and sticker-books, collecting and archiving, Angelique describes a very conscious and regulated process, where compositions are tested, and digitally revised before translated onto the material.

Not only discipline or repression work as controlling forces, but aspiration itself. The promise of visibility, recognition, and emotional fulfillment are voices just as loud. The conflict arises when the objects that organize our desires no longer correspond to the conditions of the world around us. And while this exhibition repeatedly points to the intimate and personal, these experiences are inseparably tied to broader conditions: In an art economy where privilege remains decisive, space is scarce, and success largely depends on access to networks, existing wealth, and self-exploitation, such aspirations are continually tested against reality. Trust Economics reads to me not as a critique but a very sober and personal assessment of the attachments that persisted: the ways fantasies of success and becoming continue to shape behavior, even as the conditions surrounding them grow increasingly unstable.

– Julia Künzi