Bonding Moment, 2025
SNEHTA ATHENS
Marlene Heidinger’s recent work explores the nature of connection—physical, emotional, and conceptual—through layered storytelling and experimental materials. Moving beyond traditional painting, her practice investigates how bonds are formed, sustained, or unraveled. Lines in her work are more than visual elements; they represent threads of relationships, pathways of interaction, and the shifting boundaries of personal and collective space. Whether it’s two bodies simply finding each other or the metaphor of a knot, Heidinger considers how connection takes shape and holds meaning.
Her art contrasts the closeness of human touch with the tension of disconnection—cheeks pressed together versus outstretched arms that never meet. Drawing from earlier depictions of chaotic social encounters, her focus has evolved toward the elemental structure of bonds themselves. She uses paint, rope, and elastic to ask what truly holds us together—and what happens when those ties begin to fray. In these gestures, she captures the fragile yet powerful nature of togetherness across cultures and moments.
Residency im Salvatorhaus Murau, Steiermark, 2025
Salvatorhaus Murau freut sich, die bildende Künstlerin Marlene Heidinger zu einer Residency im Ausmaß von drei Wochen im September 2025 einzuladen. Im Laufe der Residency soll sie ihre künstlerischen Wurzeln in der Region reflektieren und festigen. Heidinger's Praxis bewegt sich zwischen Malerei, Installation und kuratorischer Forschung und beschäftigt sich mit dem Thema „Verbindungen und Brüche“ auf sozialer und materieller Ebene. In Murau soll sie sich intensiv mit lokalen, traditionellen Handwerkstechniken wie Weben, Spinnen und Sticken auseinandersetzen, um diese in ihre künstlerische Arbeit zu integrieren. Daraus entsteht eine neue Werkserie, die im November 2025 in einer Einzelausstellung in Athen sowie im Dezember 2025 bei einer Einzelausstellung in Murau gezeigt wird. Das Projekt verbindet persönliche Herkunft mit internationalem Austausch und schafft einen transkulturellen Dialog zwischen Österreich und Griechenland – sowohl konzeptuell als auch materiell.
Dieses Projekt wurde durch Förderungen des Bundesministerium für Wohnen, Kunst, Kultur, Medien und Sport ermöglicht.
"Warum Feiern
Wir Noch?", 2023
PARALLEL VIENNA 05. – 10. September 2023
INTERVENTION & PERFORMANCE
With a text by Jana Schuller-Frank
GUEST ACTS: IDOKU, Novioxx, Halal Hardcore, Nina Zips, Christoph Fritz
Festivities are fleeting moments that briefly suspend everyday worries, replacing them with collective joy and movement—yet beneath the garlands and lights lies a deeper tension. Marlene Heidinger explores this duality, questioning whether art serves as mere entertainment or as a tool for critique. Her vivid, cinematic canvases portray scenes of celebration that simultaneously express hope and despair, drawing attention to the absurdity of political realities. By staging festivity as both spectacle and reflection, she invites viewers to engage emotionally and critically—each element intensifying the contrast between surface happiness and underlying unrest. In this performative celebration, Heidinger’s still yet dynamic images urge us to reflect, imagine, and, perhaps, to dance.
"Present Life", 2023
Plain Gallery is pleased to present Present Life, a group exhibition of works by Aline Alagem, Renin Bilginer, Marlene Heidinger, Hannah Jeong and Zearo.
March 2 - March 24, 2023
Present Life focuses on the analysis of daily activities and how they influence the meaning and perception of life. Explore the concept that even the simplest and most banal activities can have a profound meaning and that everything we do has an impact on our well -being and existence.
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Heidinger’s work is driven by allegory and narrative storytelling. Her indelicate construction of mixed media scenes employ vivid color, varied texture, and distorted scale to intimate significance while pulling images from geology, biology, and an archive of personal photographs. These works elevate complex, but commonplace underlying feelings centered around family, relationships, shame, love, fear (and more) to the realm of the fantastical and the supernatural.
