Playing House

Perfect Husband…Perfect Child…Perfect Career…Perfect Life…

For all you NYC single ladies, this is not your Carrie Bradshaw fantasy nor your Ozzie and Harriet reality, this is the darkly amusing, satirical art photography of Suzanne Heintz. With tongue-in-cheek and very AI–artificially intelligent–mannequin born husband and child, the incredibly lively Suzanne masterminds her own Playing House family adventures. Maybe you’ll be inspired to go out there and get a ring on it! Invite your real life guy friends along for this cool ride.

JoAnne Artman Gallery is pleased to announce the debut of Suzanne Heintz’s exhibition
Playing House, spanning the artist’s 14-year career as a conceptual photographer.

Known for her practice of subverting social norms, Heintz’s Playing House series continues her examination of the American Dream and the pressure to conform. Using two mannequins, dubbed Chauncey and Mary Margaret, Heintz stages both humorous and shocking family portraits of marital bliss and maternal love. Her radioactive color and expressionless characters hint at the darker side of conformity, namely what is lost when the image, or illusion, of happiness is confused with happiness itself. Playing House includes early photographs of Heintz’s domestic interiors up to her present practice, which incorporates public spectacle.

“This work isn’t only for women in terms of marriage; it applies to anybody whose life doesn’t fit expectations, whether that comes from their parents, their culture, or themselves. No one’s life turns out the way they or their Parents imagined it would. So many of us spend the second half of our lives trying to reconcile the choices we made in the first half. Just like any artist, I’m out to change perception. I want people, particularly women, to let go of the judgment, and embrace their lives, with or without the Mrs., PhD., or Esq. attached to their name,” Suzanne Heintz.

SUZANNE HEINTZ (b. 1965, Yonkers, New York) studied at Pratt Institute and graduated Summa Cum Laude. She currently lives and works in Denver, Colorado.