Mediterranea

The Kunsthalle Darmstadt is hosting the largest solo exhibition to date by Cypriot-German artist Harm Gerdes. Entitled Mediterranea, it brings together around 20 large canvas paintings, most of which were created in Athens over the last five years. Many of the paintings on display have never been shown before; Gerdes produced a series of five works especially for the exhibition, based on an Art Nouveau pattern from the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt.

Raised in Darmstadt, Harm Gerdes (31) studied, amongst others, under Katharina Grosse at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. He has been living and working in Athens for several years and regularly exhibits internationally. Gerdes developed and perfected a technique of pouring acrylic instead of applying oil with a brush. This innovation contributes significantly to the powerful, elegant effect of his paintings, which display color and form in a way that has not been seen in a long time.

"Harm Gerdes is inventing a new language. (...) It is closely connected with our present era, with the world of screens, with the radical transformation of the visual faculty that is presently occurring, whereby it must be observed that such an approach to painting—and this is its strength—at no time takes up the semiotic language of our screen. world but instead finds equivalents for it (...)" (Robert Fleck, quoted from the exhibition catalog)