Maleri
Egentlig fulgte Heine Skjerning billedhuggerlinien på Kunstakademiet i København, men hans interesse for maleriet blev vakt, fordi han så en mulighed i at overføre minimalismens rumafsøgende objekter til det flade lærred.
I denne søgende periode i 1990erne førte eksperimenterne videre til en integrering af motiv og betoning af fladen i en udformning med forbindelser til pop kunsten, idet Skjerning var optaget af en distance til maleriet som tradition i en meget bevidst pejling mod maleriet som konceptuel mulighed.
Det interessante er, at kunstneren udfra en bevidst søgen efter maleriets potentialer – så at sige på maleriets egne præmisser – når frem til figurer såsom gentagelsen (som minimalismens) og som rumdannende motiv indfører Skjerning en sløjfe-lignende figur, der med vrid peger ind i maleriets rum og ud mod betragterens rum.
En slags umulig figur, der ikke kan holdes fast, men bestandig forskyder og forskydes i processuelle rumforløb – understøttet af farven: geometriske striber, farvemasser og andre mere eller mindre figurative motiver.
Syntesen mellem maleri og objekt får en foreløbig form med en serie mindre malerier ophængt på en husgavl for at skabe en ny relation mellem maleri og væg. Med en serie malerier, hvor Skjerning yderligere eksperimenterer med maleriets flade og maleriet som objekt, spændes maleriet ud på en kileform med bemaling på billedets kanter. Men sløjfen er til dags dato en genopdukkende figur, en form for dynamisk metafor på billedet som flade og rum. Billedserierne bliver konkret til skulptur, i det øjeblik hvor kunstneren ser en mulighed i, at de faktisk også fungerer som stablede objekter. Et foreløbigt eksempel på Skjernings forsøg på at etablere en syntese mellem maleri og skulptur.
Painting
Actually, when he attended the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Heine Skjerning followed the curriculum for sculptors. However, his interest in painting was aroused because he spotted an opportunity to transfer minimalism’s space-scanning objects onto the flat canvas.
During this enquiring period, in the 1990s, the experiments led further to an integration of motif and accentuation of the surface in a mode of presentation that bespoke connections to pop art, inasmuch as Skjerning was interested in taking up a distance from painting as tradition, in an entirely conscious examination of the painting as conceptual possibility.
What is interesting here is that the artist, on the basis of a conscious search for painting’s potentials – carried out on painting's own terms, you might say – found his way toward figures like the repeated element (like that of minimalism) and as a space-establishing motive, Skjerning introduces a ribbon-like figure which, with its twists, points into the painting’s space and out toward the viewer's space.
It is a kind of impossible figure that cannot be held firmly in place, but is constantly displacing and being displaced in processual spatial sequences – supported by the color embodied in geometric stripes, color masses and other more or less figurative motifs.
The synthesis between painting and object comes to acquire a provisional resolution with a series of smaller paintings hung on a gable in order to create a new relation between painting and wall. With a series of paintings where Skjerning is experimenting further with the painting's surface and with the painting as object, the painting is stretched over a wedge-form, with paint applied on the picture’s edges.
But still today, the ribbon is a re-emerging figure, standing as a kind of dynamic metaphor for the picture as surface and space. The picture series is concretely transformed into sculpture in the moment when the artist spots an opportunity and suddenly apprehends that, as a matter of fact, the pictures can also function as stackable objects: here we have a case example of Skjerning’s attempts at establishing a synthesis between painting and sculpture.