Known for her eclectic and idiosyncratic approach to painting, the German artist Charline von Heyl defiantly resists a signature style. Her emergence in the early 1980s was shaped by her proximity to the art scene of Cologne. While her work is undoubtedly indebted to that context, her move to New York—away from what she terms a “heavily male” environment—prompted a wider engagement with art history, material culture, and everyday life. Plato’s Pharmacy and Dunesday depict the same row of bowling pins (the second of which is actually a long-necked bottle) against a background filled with abstract patterning, envisaged by the artist as a “stage design.” Describing the works as a “goofy take on still life and metaphysical surrealism,” Von Heyl likened the bowling pins to “Giorgio de Chirico’s tailor dolls—silent stand-ins for people—and here they are standing on the edge of the canvas in the exact same stupid way in both paintings, waiting for the ball.”

Artwork images: © Charline von Heyl; courtesy the artist and Petzel, New York. Photo by Ian Reeves.