Shenzhen at night, copyist painters recount their daily lives and their craft. Their acts shift alternately between an artistic and blue-collar imagery, from new technology to classical techniques. Here, another history of painting is being drawn.
Paul Heintz is born in 1989 in Saint-Avold (France), a Fine Arts graduate at Beaux-Arts de Nancy, Arts Décoratifs de Paris and Le Fresnoy, studio national des arts contemporains. He is currently living and working in Paris. His work goes through object, sound, film and installation has been presented at contemporary art event and film festival such as FID Marseille, IFFR Rotterdam, Paris Nuit Blanche, Circulation(s). In 2019, he won the contemporary art price Révélation Emerige.
(…) Paul Heintz’s field of action is a bizarre set of cases where what is real is largely imbued with fiction, and where social normativity also makes its weight entirely felt. There is an inherent toxicity to imagination and fiction when they combine their approval of the social norm, as is the case with storytelling for example. From there, Paul Heintz enters the logic of fiction, takes it futher and lets through redeeming current. (…) Emmanuelle Pireyre
