Bernd Heinrich

One of the most striking and intriguing elements of the new landscape work being produced in Australia at the moment is the shift towards treating the canvas as the landscape rather than using it simply to represent or depict. In this way, the artist is re-cast as 'toiler the earth' as opposed to its renderer. In these works, the Australian landscape is reborn, not as a colonial outpost, surveyor's plot, picturesque sign of leisure/work, ownership, but as a conceptual and aesthetic "playground" for the artist's imagination.

Bernd is one such artist, whose work are, quintessentially, contemporary Australian landscape, with a look that is simultaneously haunted, scarred, entrancing, lucid and resonating.

The conceptual base of Bernd's work is highly esoteric. The sense of secrecy in the images is strong, with the landscape abstracted to the point where depth, focus and form are almost, obscured - and where the earth appears to harbour secrets and symbols which point outwards to realms beyond the canvas.

Bernd's works are both highly physical (in the complex and rigorous nature of their construction) and highly esoteric. The result is a body of work which makes a well grounded and stimulating contribution to an art historical genre and to "Contemporary Landscape" as a vital element of current international artistic practice.

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