Harm Gerdes: Panorama
In this series of paintings, Gerdes explores a range of ideas via abstract symbols and 鈥渃haracters鈥� that unfurl across canvases to reveal visually imaginative and mysterious worlds. Like psycho-spiritual panoramas, the works offer a wide-angled perspective into the inner workings of the artist鈥檚 mind. While the motifs Gerdes explores are non-representational, their distinctive forms at times allude to objects found in the material world, indicating a bridge between interior psychology with physical reality.
There is a tension between the perspectival distortion of Gerdes鈥� compositions, and the even, flat quality of airbrushed color. Compositionally, the artist is concerned with creating movement around the central axis of a painting: although his canvases gesture toward blotted, Rorschach-like symmetry, the forms Gerdes paints are carefully irregular. He attains visual balance by leading the eye fluidly over painted surface, on which he layers these semi-abstract forms. Some works are based on found motifs, for instance Kallisthenous (2022), inspired by an ornamental wrought iron door encountered by the artist on a street of the same name in central Athens. Others derive totally from the artist鈥檚 inner vision, and thus allow him to delve further into suggestion and illusion. Like extraordinary landscapes, the works in this exhibition constitute abstract panoramas of the artist鈥檚 inner, fantastical, and perhaps metaphysical, world.
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In this series of paintings, Gerdes explores a range of ideas via abstract symbols and 鈥渃haracters鈥� that unfurl across canvases to reveal visually imaginative and mysterious worlds. Like psycho-spiritual panoramas, the works offer a wide-angled perspective into the inner workings of the artist鈥檚 mind. While the motifs Gerdes explores are non-representational, their distinctive forms at times allude to objects found in the material world, indicating a bridge between interior psychology with physical reality.
There is a tension between the perspectival distortion of Gerdes鈥� compositions, and the even, flat quality of airbrushed color. Compositionally, the artist is concerned with creating movement around the central axis of a painting: although his canvases gesture toward blotted, Rorschach-like symmetry, the forms Gerdes paints are carefully irregular. He attains visual balance by leading the eye fluidly over painted surface, on which he layers these semi-abstract forms. Some works are based on found motifs, for instance Kallisthenous (2022), inspired by an ornamental wrought iron door encountered by the artist on a street of the same name in central Athens. Others derive totally from the artist鈥檚 inner vision, and thus allow him to delve further into suggestion and illusion. Like extraordinary landscapes, the works in this exhibition constitute abstract panoramas of the artist鈥檚 inner, fantastical, and perhaps metaphysical, world.
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