Ohne Titel Collage

Keke Heldt was born in 1984. He spent his childhood and the first years of school on the island Mallorca, in Spain. Not just somewhere on the coast, but in the renowned artist's colony called Deià. There, he looked over the shoulder of famous painters, and everyday he could witness paintings grow in shape and changing in their form. Therefore, he was already early embedded in typical artist rhythms, being able to join festivities and exhibitions of all sorts of excessive art pieces. Already as a child, he had his first exhibitions in Germany and Spain. In German-wide newspapers, magazines and tv news his outstanding talent was reported. Already as a child he was able to draw heads and faces with just one simple line. His main field of figurative interest was head-creatures. Already when he was four years old, he painted with oil colors and experimented with several materials. As a young man, Keke was a rebel, a punk that didn't care about the system nor the institutions. Periodically he painted illegally on public walls with graffiti and other materials. He went so far that he even decided to live on the streets, an intinctive clash with his middle-class family. At the age of sixteen, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. His creativity dramatically stagnated for more than a decade. After a long process and a lot of effort, he slowly started to paint again. Since one year ago, an enormous creative urge overwhelmed him. For him, one day without painting or without experimenting is a wasted day. After 30 years, the head-creature theme still fascinates him a lot, but his style matured and achieved much more variety. Instead of employing one particular technique or material, he constantly experiments with multiple colors, forms, lights, papers, glasses or canvasses. Keke belongs to those artists which are always reinventing themselves. He is painting people, buildings and streets in the way he sees them, and never fails to offer the viewer a new approach to the way we perceive reality. He is ceaselessly inviting the audience to participate in his world, for the perspective of the observer and his own interpretation make his artworks complete. Only the viewer's fantasy allows an all-round understanding of Keke's works and his world.