HEIDI FOURIE: SOFT RELEASE
Opening on the 22nd of November 2025 at 11am
151 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood
Blending In, 2025, Oil on Board, 32.1 x 25 cm
Soft Release is a solo exhibition by Heidi Fourie featuring paintings and unique works on paper inspired by her encounters with nature during various residencies in 2025.
Fourie explores the delicate boundary between the human and natural worlds, drawing on personal encounters with wildlife, wilderness, and the emotional terrain of reconnection. Through her evocative paintings and expressive brushwork, Fourie reflects on our estranged relationship with nature marked by awe, guilt, and longing.
At the heart of the exhibition is the artist’s deepening fascination with the animal gaze, particularly that of primates and birds. Observations of bushbabies in her Pretoria studio, field trips across South Africa, and witnessing the unforgettable encounter of eighty rehabilitated vultures being released form a tapestry of experiences that animate the works on show. These moments become metaphors for broader ideas of rewilding, vulnerability, and the slow, soft process of return — to nature, to instinct, to belonging. The artist notes that:
“The natural world begs to be painted, and its language begs to be understood.”
Fourie’s paintings function as emotional landscapes, where curious creatures peer through foliage or rocky apertures, meeting the viewer’s gaze with quiet questions. With sensitivity and wit, she reflects on what it means to be a “primate” in an increasingly artificial world — still wild at heart, but unsure how to belong in the wild.