Alex Heilbron | Ochi Gallery

Alex Heilbron is a Los Angeles–based artist whose work examines pattern as both a formal device and a site of cultural meaning shaped by social, psychological, and political perceptions of femininity. Drawing from found images, she enlarges and distills these forms, burrowing into them at the pixel level to intuit underlying structures. These patterns are exhaustively translated into vinyl stencils and placed on the surface of the canvas, building surfaces that are meticulously handmade yet constrained by digital systems. Across her work, Heilbron insists on painting as a physical mode of communication, embedding traces of embodied labor within systems that increasingly threaten to eclipse it. Alex Heilbron (b. San Rafael, California) received her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles, her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and studied with Rita McBride and Christopher Williams at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in Germany. Her work has been exhibited internationally including at as-is, Meliksetian Briggs, Temple Projects, and LAXART in Los Angeles, CA; Claremont Lewis Museum in Claremont, CA; Santa Barbara Museum of Art in Santa Barbara, CA; The Modern in Fort Worth, TX; Wil Aballe Art Projects in Vancouver, BC, Canada; Anne Barrault in Paris, France; Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf, Germany; and Moscow Museum of Art in Moscow, Russia. Heilbron received a Pollock-Krasner Grant for 2023-2024 and a Helen Frankenthaler Painting Award in 2020. Her work has been featured and reviewed in publications including The Brooklyn Rail, artnet, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, Glasstire, Paper City Magazine, and Santa Barbara Independent. Heilbron lives and works in Los Angeles, California.