Harald Reiner Gratz in the Rothamel Gallery in Erfurt
- Written by Portal Editor
We cordially invite you and your friends to the opening with the artist on Saturday, October 21st at 8 p.m.!
Three years ago we showed the prologue to Harald Gratz’s fantastic series “Abendland”. It has since grown, developed and been shown in four museums. Now we present the conclusion, or if you will, the epilogue.
The West is not a ship, but a cultural island. It is submerged but does not sink. Antiquity, Christianity, the Middle Ages, Enlightenment – washed up, washed away. With the waves of modernity came red, brown and green broth. New layers. Every now and then a piece of land peeks out, with ghosts sitting on top. Then the next wave. Other islands are in sight, getting closer with every tide.
When Harald Gratz describes the West, he is a gifted and knowledgeable narrator who uses painting rather than words. He shapes them into parables, metaphors, mental cinema. Gratz studied at Halle Castle and the Dresden Academy in the 1980s, and later lived in Rome and New York. Modernity and postmodernism determine his artistic language: the Fauves, the Expressionists, David Hockney.
His painting is opulent, sometimes lively, often vibrant; the colours lie sparkling in precious layers on the canvases. He masters the old master's style virtuoso and lets it shine through again and again. As a rule, he avoids it, like a brilliant artist who makes spectacular falls dressed as a clown.
Harald Reiner Gratz is a grand master of mental cinema. He ends the availability of empty canvases with arbitrary brushstrokes, which result in loose compositions into whose framework he weaves his stories. Worlds emerge whose actions intertwine and drive each other in opposite directions like the wheels of a large clockwork with many complications.
Harald Reiner Gratz
Occident
epilogue
October 21st to November 18th
Gallery Rothamel Erfurt
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