Tatjana Gerhard
‘THE POWER OF ILLUSION - THE ILLUSION OF POWER’
14.05.2022 — 19.06.2022
Exhibition view, ‘THE POWER OF ILLUSION - THE ILLUSION OF POWER’, PLUS-ONE Galley, 2022
Tatjana Gerhard (born 1974) has been living and working in Ghent, Belgium, since 2010. Born and raised in Switzerland and with a partly Croatian background, she started her artist life there after studying at the art academy in Zurich. With (participation in) exhibitions in Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Italy and France, her work is gradually making its way into the international landscape of painting. Even in her early paintings Tatjana Gerhard's work exists by the grace of the rawness of human existence. With a ruthless gaze, her work dissects man and his existence in all its facets. In a visual language that is related to that of, for example, Maria Lassnig, Francis Bacon, Lee Krasner, Philip Guston or Louise Bonnet, Gerhard takes up a position in the art of painting with great accuracy.
With the exhibition THE POWER OF ILLUSION - THE ILLUSION OF POWER, Tatjana Gerhard holds up the concepts of power and illusion. The title mirrors itself, creating an endless reversal and repetition of the question it contains: is power an illusion/what is the power of an illusion? What does this mean for the painting? What does it mean for the human being? In this exhibition, Tatjana Gerhard brings together scenes of mostly intertwined or disintegrating pairs of figures. It is difficult to define what the figures are doing or what state/situation they are in. They may be engaged in a fight but just as easily entwined in a passionate dance of love. It is striking that no figure is depicted alone. There is always a second, 'another', to be seen somewhere. Sometimes they seem chained to each other, symbiotically fused, as if they can only with difficulty break free or are trapped in each other. Caught in a trap. The question is often where one figure 'ends' and the other 'begins'. Amorphous 'heaps' of people find themselves in strange and awkward positions, trying to find a posture with departed faces. The images Tatjana Gerhard paints can rarely be grasped at a glance. On the contrary, they ask the viewer to decipher slowly and cautiously, to unravel the image from the impetuous and sometimes almost violently applied mass of paint and to untangle the knot of layers that flow into each other - both in meaning and in matter. Like a dissonant piece of music in which the melody is lost, this is how Gerhard's works appear: as distorted depictions of the condition of man in times of loneliness, fear, pain, desire, passion and love. One thing is certain: Gerhard does not shy away from major themes.
Excerpt of the exhibition text written by Iris Paschalidis, 2022
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Tatjana Gerhard (°1974) lives and works in Ghent, Belgium.
Gerhard’s figures exhibit a deconstructed quality that reflects the fragility and impermanence of human existence. Tatjana Gerhard emphasizes the importance of contemplating the human form and emotions through the medium of painting. Her paintings often blend elements of the grotesque with humor, and they challenge the viewer's perception of the familiar by presenting figures that appear both human and otherworldly.
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Exhibition: 14.05.2022 — 19.06.2022
PLUS-ONE Gallery
Léon Stynenstraat 21
2000 Antwerp (BE)
