“When you erase the face, you’re left to focus on all the other elements – colour, form and texture – and no longer focus on who is wearing something, but what is being shown.”
—Erik Madigan Heck The present, strikingly minimalist work by Erik Madigan Heck (b.1983) represents a continuation of his series Without A Face, focusing on the backs of the garments, which began as a 2013 commission by New York’s lifestyle publication The Cut. Here, the artist juxtaposes black and white, positive and negative space to emphasise form, shape and line. In his approach to image-making, photography and painting intersect: ‘Paintings make me think more abstractly about my photographs.’ His painterly aesthetic is evident in his treatment of colour and pattern. ‘I’m primarily interested in shooting people without their faces because I think as a culture we’ve become obsessed with the face,’ he continues, ‘and lose sight of the whole picture.’
Heck is a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, TIME and The New Yorker, and in 2013, became one of the youngest artists to receive the prestigious Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography. His first monograph Old Future was published by Thames & Hudson in 2017 and his work has been shown internationally, including at Musée des Beaux-Arts du Locle (2018), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2019) and the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow (2019).
