Sculpture Magazine, Matthew Kangas, Jan - Feb 1995
"Beautifully constructed of recycled and painted wood, Heino's "Effigy" series of wall sculptures grew out of the Constructivist tradition of body as machine. By using wood and paint, however, the artist has softened the industrial brutality of his forebears and ameliorated any lingering sense of the automation. The body seems a departure point for an investigation of geometric fragments, spatial interlay, and the molded surface. The "disquieting muses" of de Chirico were distantly invoked, with their oval darning-egg heads. Unlike Anderson and Grossman, Heino fractured the body, not to depict harm or threat, but to expose the intellectual construction of our notions of body language."

Artweek, Susan Olds, Vol. 25, no. 16, Aug. 1994
"Infused with a kind of stellar light, "Saint" transcends the limits of paint and canvas to capture the evocative power of the unknown. Recalling the early nocturne paintings of de Kooning and Pollack, Heino's rubbings investigate the haunting beauty of the night while exploring formal problems of representation. As in his constructions, what distinguishes the artist's two-dimensional work is an ability to articulate the manifold visual complexities of positive and negative space as well as formal and conceptual concerns."

New Art Examiner, Loch Adamson, Oct. 1994
"In his most riveting works, the artist's growing vocabulary of abstracted, simplified shapes begins to resonate with multiple definitions. Referencing both Russian Constructivism and Cubism, Heino's sculptural paintings span two and three dimensions. Declamatory clarity and brash confidence mask the artist's arbitration; all we see is visual simplicity. Forms appear in their purest state - at some point past Heino must have redrawn these figures again and again, reducing them to their essence. Seeking ideal, formal essentialism, he carves emotional symbolism from raw, recycled substance. The relationship of both form to surface, and of incised line to unadulterated texture, creates the integral tension - and strength - of his art."

ARTCOAST/Contemporary Art, Peter Frank, West and East, Vol. 1, no. 1, 1989
The Neo-Constructivism label applies less and less to Steve Heino's painting and sculpture. The appellation was once appropriate stylistically, indicating not only Heino's reliance on geometric formulations, intricate compositional strategies, and carpenter like technique, but also his rich, sensuous use of diverse substances (the Constructivist tradition, as practiced by Arp, Moholy-Nagy, Schwitters, and so many others, was nothing if not Epicurean in its response to materials). But a few years ago Heino began to be diverted by other concerns, which did not reduce his involvement with renewed Constructivist principles so much as shift them to ulterior programs. The change - or, more accurately, expansion, was problematic at first. But recent exhibits show Heino back in command of his style, and exercising a new grasp of his subject matter. Heino has aimed his method at an obliquely narrative, and therefore figural (some insist neo-expressionist) imagery, one in which literal and symbolic content conflate. That signature, rough-hewn elegance has returned in the latest group of bas-relief paintings and sculptures. In these, the not always easy grasped ideas and stories remain appealing due in part to the sensuousness of the materials. What drives home the pleasure of Heino's texts, you might say, are the pleasures of his textures.

ArtForum, Susan C. Larsen, Jan. 1985
Steven Heino's constructed paintings reiterate many aspects of the Constructivist idiom - rectilinearity, a desire for complex spatial structures, and the use of common industrial materials. There is something quite inspiring in the way Heino puts all of this together. He works on a grand scale, but maintains a deftness of touch in small, subtle areas and transitional zones. Heino's muscular structures lean heavily on the example of Frank Stella's exuberant constructed paintings, but his sensibility affirms the rectilinear, the architectonic, and the atmospheric. The most startling and memorable aspect of his works, in fact, is its capability to establish an ethereal surface, a quality that ties it to the paintings of Richard Diebenkorn, for example, more closely than Stella.

Artweek, Mac McCloud, Vol. 14, no. 35, Oct. 1983
"Visually, these works are complex, carefully restrained in color, and as controlled as the swing of a professional acrobat. They are active rather than passive or contemplative, even challenging rather than captivating - works of an artist moving swiftly toward a vital maturity of vision that is already evident in the work's seriousness and intensity."

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