When you walk into “Ins Büro!”—a collection of German-born, Antwerp-based artist Kati Heck’s paintings, drawings, and sculpture at Corbett vs. Dempsey—the first thing you see, right near the entrance, is a painted wooden human hand on the wall with a small flagpole protruding from its pointing index finger. A flag hangs from the horizontal pole with the title of the exhibition on it in big, round, red text (English translation: “Go to the office!”). For Heck, “going to work” means drifting off into whimsical dreams in her studio-based bed. “Heck gets a lot of her best ideas when she is sleeping, and mines her dreams for ideas,” says John Corbett, co-owner of the gallery. “The line between work and play is obviously very porous for her, and I think that is part of what this work explores.”
My favorite piece is Schutzengel (2015), a large puppetlike sculpture of a woman’s severed torso and head (with a nightcap on it) placed in the center of the space. The sculpture’s cartoonish quality deviates from the style consistently seen within the 2-D works; its exaggerated facial features and bright pink skin contrast with the realistic elements of the painted characters’ forms. Yet the sculpture isn’t an outlier—it completes the exhibit. Heck paints herself with a matching nightcap and purple nose in the painting Prozess (2015), which hangs directly to the sculpture’s right. In this work she flashes a briefcase to the audience while in a nightgown, as if she’s being captured on her way to bed. Or rather, the “office.”
