BERLIN.- Galerie Max Hetzler will present Haven, Danielle Mckinney’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, at Bleibtreustraße 45 and 15/16 in Berlin.

Mckinney’s interior scenes capture moments of human introspection with painterly lyricism. Depicted in darkly lit domestic interiors, the artist’s exclusively Black and female protagonists sleep, read, smoke, or lounge languidly across sumptuous furniture, wholly immersed in their inner worlds.

It is here that Mckinney’s figures find refuge – a state of being that permeates the fifteen new works on view. The titular painting, Haven, acts as a central work. A woman lounges on her golden bed as light filters in through the curtains to illuminate a small painting of a resting unicorn enclosed by a fence. The artist here imagines a mythological corollary to her protagonist, who finds a place of repose – a haven –amidst a turbulent world.

Trained as a photographer, Mckinney arranges her subjects cinematographically, with an astute awareness of space, atmosphere and mood. The compositions are built from an all-black canvas, creating scenes which seem to emerge from darkness, echoing both the chiaroscuro of Spanish Golden Age painting and the evolution of a photograph in a darkroom. Shimmers of light and colour, rendered with thick, dappled brushstrokes, punctuate this eternal twilight: the faint glow of a lit cigarette, the glimmer of a velvety sofa or the piercing red of carefully applied nail polish.

Mckinney’s atmospheric interiors are both anonymous and welcoming, often incorporating imagery from social media, 1960s magazines, or art history itself. In Rhythm with Blue, a nude figure dozes off, sprawled under a rendition of Henri Matisse’s The Dance, while several of the artist’s other reclining figures conjure Edouard Manet’s Olympia. Uninhibited by our gaze, these women command the spaces in which they find themselves.

Through painting, Mckinney revels in the interior spaces we hold and inhabit. Her compositions are at once cryptic and soulful, translating private yet universal gestures of solitude and contemplation with extraordinary sensitivity. ‘I’m kind of putting myself into those spaces’ the artist notes, ‘I just hope I leave them open enough for people to feel comfortable coming in.’

Danielle Mckinney (b. 1981, Montgomery, USA) lives and works in Jersey City, USA. The artist’s work has been presented in institutional solo exhibitions at Kunsthal n, Copenhagen and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (both 2024); and group exhibitions in institutions including Columbus Museum of Art; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha; Dallas Museum of Art (all 2023); Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; The Contemporary Austin; Rudolph Tegners Museum and Statue Park, Dronningmølle; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (all 2022); Asia Art Center, Taipei; and Flag Art Foundation, New York (both 2021), among others.