The photographs are identically sized and framed. Prim and proper, vertical portraits form an orderly pattern across the gallery walls. Their spacing is precise. Everything about them is impeccable. This is the facade Jackie Heitchue has constructed for her lustrous, unsettling tableaus in “What I Know So Far,” a sophisticated and affecting solo exhibit on view at the Griffin Museum’s satellite gallery at the Greater Boston Stage Company in Stoneham, MA through April 2nd, 2019.
Heitchue’s scenes are luminous and perfectly balanced, imbuing a tactile sensuality to her subjects, whether a nascent plant, a dead bird, the pet dog or, the real subject of every image, one of her children. Whether one is pictured indoors before traditional Yankee backdrops of muted floral wallcoverings and pastoral landscape paintings or outdoors against lush, dark forests, Heitchue conveys a discomfiting sensation of imminent change. It’s a quiet kind of suspense, like waiting for someone you expect to arrive. Of course, it is Heitchue who is waiting, marking her life and love against her children’s growth and change, solemnizing the moments before they take wing.
Heitchue deploys symbolic objects with sparse elegance. Some things are universally decipherable, like the basin filled with fresh, unsoiled water over which Heitchue’s pubescent daughter is gracefully poised, looking into the distance – no doubt her future. There is a painting of turbulent seas in the background and I can identify with Heitchue as the mother worrying about the inevitable storms ahead. Other objects are obviously personal and remain mysterious, but Heitchue’s scenes all mesmerize with their balance of surface calm and underlying tension.
With her flawless formal portrait techniques, carefully positioned, emblematic household artifacts and wittingly enigmatic subjects, Heitchue demonstrates an appealing restraint that intensifies the stirring undercurrent in her quietly disquieting narratives. In “What I Know So Far,” Heitchue dons a photographic velvet glove – fetching, soft, and packing a powerful emotional punch.
For more information about this exhibit, go to: https://griffinmuseum.org/show/what-i-know-so-far-2/