Tatjana Gerhard
Tatjana Gerhard
°1974, Zurich, Switzerland
Lives and works in Ghent, Belgium and Zurich, Switzerland
Gerhard’s realist oil paintings feature a peculiar species of troll- or ghost-like figures in a dreamlike world with melancholic undertones. Leaving her works untitled, Gerhard gives no clues about her mysterious figures, who seem to oscillate between grotesque, horrific, playful, and comic. The simple scenes unfold intuitively in Gerhard’s mind, and she paints them quickly in the manner of Surrealists’ automatism in order to capture the essentials of her inspiration; she later finesses the canvas with additional thin layers of paint until it evolves into the final image.