Harding Meyer - Malerei
With a group of new portraits, Harding Meyer continues to analyse the artistic principles of his portrait painting and extends his range. Alongside the familiar dreamlike beauty and facial distortion, another aspect becomes apparent.
With a format that is dimensionally effective, Harding Meyer's protagonists look at us in a magical way and the photo realism of their presence is formidable. Often worked and reworked over months and in multiple layers of paint, the larger than life aspect of the portraits affords true attention to detail. Disregarding the role of traditional portraits, Harding Meyer's faces do not reveal the essence of the individual. Observers are certainly required to focus their gaze and enter into a dialogue with Meyer's painted figures, yet these reveal neither their inner nor outer being. Meyer's works do not primarily intend to comprehend the nature of the person portrayed. They are more like set piece perspectives into the characters and faces of an anonymous flood of images. By decontextualising them in virtuoso style, the artist snatches these perspectives from their mass media origins and furnishes them with a new intensity.
Contrary to current methods of digital enhancement and retouching, the skin surface of Meyer's protagonists is not smoothed out, but instead is torn up and fragmented. At the same time, diverse perspectives of view and form converge in a picture and thus "deform" the depicted faces. In spite of, or even because of artistic intervention, the effect of an individual expression is intensified in the faces portrayed. However, the artist's specific paint and pallet knife technique, by which he fragments the surface of the painting, also suggests that the focus for him is not the subject but rather a conflict which has been released into the painting.
Born in Brazil in 1964, Harding Meyer studied at the Kunstakademie in Karlsruhe and in 1999 was awarded the prestigious Helmut Stober Prize.
Following a successful solo exhibition at Volta 5 in Basel and numerous further international appearances, this exhibition is Harding Meyer's third individual show at the Gallery Jarmuschek + Partner.
Trang Vu Thuy
Harding Meyer
about-face
In about-face, Harding Meyer shows us more than his usual beautiful stills of medial faces and abstract beauties whose gazes seem to fade off into nothingness. Harding Meyer evokes the intentional deformation of his protagonists in about-face.
While nearly perfect portraits unfamiliar to Meyer have previously been the object of his performance, he is now working with his own photographs and already intentionally manipulating the subjects in this preliminary stage of his work – he deforms noses, distorts teeth and allows eye lids and halves of the face to appear as though they have been disfigured by palsy. He then transfers his demiurgic work to the canvas to further celebrate the manipulation there and further alienate the portrait with various layers. A pure view of the preceding masking is thus not exposed and the deconstruction of the protagonists is supplemented by his specific painting and spackling technique, which furrow the surface of the image. He then centres the portrait in a square format so that nothing can distract the eye and offer a chance to escape.
The perspective calls upon the audience to continually begin anew in classifying the nature of the subjects in order to decipher the portrait. Despite or perhaps due to the deformations, the character of the subjects comes through in the newest portraits by Harding Meyer; the true essence of the persons depicted is felt despite the alienation until the impression of an honest portrait arrives.
about-face is Harding Meyer’s second solo exhibition at Galerie Jarmuschek + Partner. In it, Harding Meyer is moving away from his previous path, as “about-face” means a change of direction, a change of perspective, change – and for Harding Meyer, another significant facet towards the completion of his own artistic self portrait.
Harding Meyer was born in Brazil in 1964 and studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Karlsruhe. He received the prestigious Helmut- Stober-Prize in 1999.
Claudia Barthoi