Galleri K

GALLERI K – ART BRUSSELS 

Stand 1D-03

TILL GERHARD 23- 27 April 2009

Till Gerhard (b.1971, Hamburg, Germany) is amongst the most interesting artists on the European art scene today. At Art Brussels, Galleri K presents his solo exhibition “Deep Purple”, consisting of several paintings and a sculpture of a crystal-like structure with an interior mirrorball. The paintings’ purple colour connect the works together. It is a colour that for the artist represents a line between the visible and the invisible world. 

Gerhards motifs are characterised by environments within which the human, through religiously undertoned ceremonies, tries to connect to nature. The environments are chosen from alternative protest movements, trying to detach themselves from established society. But in the same way as in many religious sects, the individuals have lost most of their personality and are controlled by the group as a uniform formation. Painted, or with faces behind masks, the individuals are alienated. At the same time, being covered, might also be a strategy whereby one allows oneself to overstep the boundaries one cannot recognise as an individual. 

The blind group affiliation has an undercurrent of something disturbing and uncomfortable. This is no longer about innocent youth movements preaching peace and living in harmony with Nature. The brainwashed worshipers are equally bound and controlled by their environment as the bourgeois they criticize. 

Gerhard’s works are multifaceted and often ambiguous and paradoxical. He gets his ideas and themes for his works from books, movies, TV and his own private photographs, which he refines into concrete manifestations in his paintings. As in Carl Gustav Jungs theories about archetypes; the notion that humans have an intuitive mechanism that regulate ones perceptions of the world, Gerhard transformes these external images to internal images. 

Gerhard has exhibited at Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kunsthalle Kiel and Dundee Contemporary Arts. He is also represented in collections as Saatchi and Frank Cohen Collections.