Till Gerhard

In the works of the painter and Hamburg resident Till Gerhard (born in 1971), media images are condensed into what seems to be archetypical scenes. Spaces of association are opened up via large-format canvases and installations; these make reference to countless photographs, films and pieces of music but especially to the utopian or spiritual ideas of the 1960s and 1970s and comment on the fundamental questions of human existence. Self-declared bringers of light transform the human need for find in a group into a horror that is concealed behind intense, hallucinatory colour. The mysterious becomes the familiar that suddenly appears in a new diffuse and confusing light. However there would be no painting without light and great light creates many shadows. Light and light sources in the literal and the metaphorical sense stand at the centre of Till Gerhard’s newest works.