Exhibition Respektive.
The graphic artist and painter Sebastian Harwardt can be counted among the particularly high-profile and interesting contemporary artists in Saxony-Anhalt. Born in Stendal in 1982, he studied humanities in Berlin before completing his degree in graphic design at the Burg Giebichenstein Academy of Art in Halle under Prof. Rug in 2015. Numerous solo exhibitions in Halle and his Altmark region of origin, participation in exhibitions in Germany and abroad, scholarships and prizes have since borne witness to the positive response to his artistic work.
For several years now, Harwardt’s preferred motif has been the urban landscape: architecture isolated, alienated, reassembled, for example into Potemkian villages, as one of his series is called. Sections of postcard-worthy architectural monuments are processed with the same value and aesthetic interest as the charming unsightliness of urban peripheries with their closed factory gates, graffitied kiosks, windowless gable walls and uniform traffic markings. The urban landscapes are often piled up, staggered, realistically detailed but ultimately also unreal or surreal due to their excessive sharpness, collage-like quality and breaks in perspective.
Sebastian Harwardt works with impressive skill in various materials, techniques and mixed media. The spectrum ranges from color woodcut to digital printing. He combines collages with acrylic painting or achieves equally surprising and visually beguiling results by printing digital collages on Chromalux. A series of color woodcuts entitled “Beat” (2022) unfolds a rich panorama of graphic structures and transparent color shadows by means of architectural motifs. These are highly aesthetic compositions that captivate with their complex order, graphic sharpness and elegance. The artist’s visual precision also extends to the choice of frames, which are sometimes colored as part of the picture.
Harwardt’s Bitterfeld exhibition is by no means a retrospective. But for those who look closely, it can be a “perspective” in which the appearance of our built and social environment is expressed differently and more precisely in the sense of this term.