LOREEN HINZ: BEYOND BEAUTY

Cur­rently living in Leip­zig, artist Loreen Hinz (born 1983) has esta­blis­hed her­self as a fix­ture in inter­na­tio­nal Fashion & Beauty Pho­to­gra­phy. Her work can be found in nume­rous pho­to­blogs and on the web­sites of renow­ned labels. Since con­tri­bu­ting pho­to­graphs from her series “InVivo” to the Ger­man web­site art—Das Kunst­ma­ga­zin and hol­ding an exhi­bi­tion of select works withVogue Italy in Milan, Loreen Hinz has been reco­gnized as a high-caliber pho­to­gra­pher. Her sen­si­tive tre­at­ment of expe­ri­men­tal tech­ni­ques and portraiture-oriented design prin­ci­ples have ele­va­ted her images to the sta­tus of con­vey­ing supe­rior, sen­sual expe­ri­en­ces.
In balan­ced, pho­to­gra­phic com­po­si­ti­ons, strong con­trasts of light and color often emerge, as well as an expe­ri­men­tal moment in the form of motion blur, which occurs while cap­tu­ring an image with the camera. Only occa­sio­nally does Hinz carry out post-processing. The results are images of grace­ful female beau­ties inte­gra­ted into a mys­te­rious, dif­fu­sed environ­ment that lacks pro­per spa­tial defi­ni­tion. In con­junc­tion with blur­red con­tours, there ari­ses sen­sa­tion of dema­te­ria­liza­tion and trans­cen­dence.
It’s not only the redu­ced con­tours shar­p­ness and aquarell-like flowing light effects, but also the pre­sen­ted sub­jects of por­trait and nude that prove to be ele­ments of an inter­na­li­zed arche­typal form and image reper­toir, resul­ting less from a pro­cess of awa­ren­ess than being deter­mined on the level of fantasically-surreal. Com­pa­ra­ble to the pic­to­ria­lism of his­to­rism the image crea­ti­ons of the artist rep­re­sent the style canon of por­trait pain­ting from 16^th to 19^th cen­tury, but wit­hout imi­ta­ting a cer­tain style or even a cer­tain artist, even if back-references to Old Mas­ters such as Titian, Cara­vag­gio or Ing­res are inten­tio­nally cal­cu­la­ted.
On this basis, Hinz attri­bu­tes her fashion and por­trait pho­to­gra­phy to what she con­siders gene­tic raw mate­ri­als by con­sciously sta­ging deli­cate color pala­tes, poses, attri­bu­tes, and blur­ri­ness, but never in an imme­diate repete­tive way. Like this, the for­mal auto­nomy is pre­ser­ved, des­pite a sty­listic pro­xi­mity to his­to­ric pain­ting. In con­junc­tion with their tech­ni­cally per­fect imple­men­ta­tion these works dis­play a cap­ti­vat­ing effect.
On view for the first time at the Gal­lery for Con­tem­porary Pho­to­gra­phy, the piece “Madame Seed­ler” (2016), which was born out of inspi­ra­tion found in the stu­dio of Leipzig-based artist Anija Seed­ler, con­nects aspects of modern fashion pho­to­gra­phy through its artistic adapta­ti­ons of early Ger­man Mas­ters such as Cra­nach und Hans Bal­dung Grien. The sym­bio­sis of modern pain­ting of Leip­zig stu­dents and the human indi­vi­dual forms a high­point in the oeu­vre of the artist who also lives in Leip­zig artist.