Harding Meyer
about-face

November 1st – December 20th, 2008

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.