Jonathan Carver Moore is pleased to present Infinite, a solo exhibition by Victoria Mara Heilweil. Heilweil’s lens-based practice documents the everyday to highlight and elevate the ordinary human experience.
Infinite is a contemplation of water as both a symbolic emotional state and a physical element. Water is constantly in motion: dynamic, unstable, rapid. Heilweil views motherhood in the same manner. Mothering is not something you can plan for. You can only embrace the moment. Like water, it has fluid edges with no end – it is infinite.
One of Heilweil’s greatest inspirations is the strength of her transgender son. After the teen had been struggling with debilitating mental health issues, the artist and her husband made the difficult decision to send him away to a therapeutic boarding school. Heilweil vacillated between hope and despair, courage and fear, fortitude and immobilization. The experience shaped her into a more empathetic and flexible person comfortable with life’s ebb and flow.
Heilweil’s imagery emphasizes visual sensation over a realistic depiction, creating an embodied response to water. By removing the horizon line, the artist amplifies the infinite space, forming an expanse that plays with our sense of the micro and macro. You are not simply looking at the water – you are immersed in it.
Infinite is a site for reflection.
Heilweil’s artwork has been exhibited at the de Young Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art San Jose, Robert V. Fullerton Art Museum,University Art Gallery at California State Chico and the Center for Photographic Art. Her photographs are included in the collections of Cornell University, Center for Photography at Woodstock, San Francisco Arts Commission, CPMC Sutter Health Van Ness Hospital and the San Francisco Library.