Paul Heintz
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 between Paris and the Lorraine region. 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 and Artist book of the year Adagp 2021.
Paul Heintz’s eld 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 further and lets through redeeming current.
His Project at Villa Medici:
“Obstructionism is a term theorised by the militant journalist Emile Pouget at the beginning of the 20th century. It takes as its starting point the Obstruction of the Italian railway workers: the “Ferrovieri”. He describes in detail how, during the 1905 railway strikes in Italy, the railway workers were busy continuing to work while slowing down their tasks to the extreme to show their opposition.
During my residency at Villa Medici, I will use these accounts and archives from the time of the “Ferrovieri” Obstruction to develop an artistic work between documentation, performance and cinema.”
© Paul Heintz