"Portrait (from Latin protrahere "to draw forth"), formerly also Konterfei (Latin contrafacere "to imitate"), refers to the depictive, formative and interpretive representation of a certain person in his or her vivid appearance, i.e. in the expression of his or her social and spiritual being that can be directly grasped by the senses. The artist's work is the result of a process of transformation of the image of a person into an image, i.e. into an expression of his social and spiritual being that can be directly grasped by the senses."
[Lexikon der Kunst: Bildnis, p. 1. Digitale Bibliothek Vol. 43: Lexikon der Kunst, p. 3723 (cf. LdK Vol. 1, p. 558) (c) E. A. Seemann].
The auratic gaze
Every person finds himself in them, recognizes a desirable quality, a long cherished dream expresses itself by simply looking at them. Simple fascination surrounds the portraits of Harding Meyer. The fascination with them can be occupied with the term aura, originating from Greek mythology. Aura describes an energetic-characterizing radiation that surrounds a (human) body. This term was taken up by philosophers and cultural scientists such as Walter Benjamin in the 20th century and linked the fine arts with technical progress. The aura of a work of art stands for the original, that is, for authenticity, and for authenticity that is worthy of worship. Benjamin splits aura into sacred and exhibition value, which has a quasi-sacred effect on people due to museum presentation. "But inherent in the gaze is the expectation of being reciprocated by the one to whom it gives itself (...) To experience the aura of an appearance is to endow it with the capacity to open the gaze," Benjamin writes in reference to the reciprocation of the gaze as a social experience. The viewer himself is now able to breathe life into a work of art by purely looking at it, thus creating aura. "(...) the gaze is returned." - A spectrum of human experience spans between work and contemplation, which is palpable in Harding Meyer's portraits and photographs.
That these portraits are based on photographs from glossy magazines, television, and advertising is obvious. The desire to focus on the most immaculate image and to work on it layer by layer, to reshape it and sometimes to work destructively, seems to play with the aura of the work of art. Reproduction of reproduction would be a plausible conclusion to explain this phenomenon, but Meyer modifies the non-classical portraits of a wide variety of types, predominantly young women and men. Some faces blur, become out of focus. Others suffer injury through skillful distortion, losing their flawlessness, becoming vulnerable and human. Non-classical because the artist renounces the vertical format, which would correspond to the shape of the head itself. He also adopts the structural composition of portraits from the cinema screen: large close-ups in oversize look at us.
The direct gaze with which Meyer works inevitably appeals to the viewer: "Look here, look at me!" And so it is up to the viewer to study the facial features of the portrait, to "undress" layer by layer, though conversely to feel observed. Twisted voyeurism - for the viewer has no choice but to return the direct, provocative gaze. In layers, Harding Meyer applies the youthful faces in front of a mostly monochrome background, on which the application and removal of the colors is clearly visible.
Above all, the concrete layers of painting - a working method that happens processually - provide information about the development of the personality on the canvas. The painter himself also looks at his painted faces over a longer period of time, during which he slightly changes the adopted image templates; in expression and form. He breathes new-typed life into them, so to speak. For indirectly the artist does not treat concrete persons, but works with anonymity and stereotypes that can correspond to each of us. A portrait that corresponds to us, but is not us. We are alike. The title of the exhibition draws attention to the similarity of our types, subtly pillorying the Western quest for individuality. Indeed, the abstract mirror situation underscores for the viewer the manufactured intimacy suggested by proximity.
Featured by...
The series features is an attempt to create new sculptural photographs from the large pool of collected faces. Harding Meyer draws on his archive and presents it newly assembled, collage-like on styrofoam heads. The filigree, three-dimensional sculptures, to which mouths, noses, eyes and other parts of the face are pinned, exist only for a short time, however, and are thus ephemeral - an allusion to the current beauty and youth mania of our society? Making the "vanitas" symbolism tangible, Harding Meyer archives his heads with the help of today's most current gadget: the iPhone. Framed and behind glass, the often haphazardly assembled collages - 60 x 60 cm in size - bring about what Harding Meyer is aiming at: focus on features, i.e. on special characteristics that come to the fore. In this case, the face suddenly consists only of these special features, as the big red kissing mouth shows, or the snub nose, the heavily made-up eyes, and now and then an injured or damaged feature jumps out at the viewer. While the three-dimensionality is lost, the cropped images go back to where they came from, namely the world of glossy magazines that once made them appear immaculately beautiful. The artist breaks with the apparent beauty, however, and even leaves open new interpretations with the grotesque and bizarre face archives. Perhaps Harding Meyer is also playing with the auratic level of a work of art. For as in his painted portraits, the sculptural photographs arise from illustrations, from reproductions. This time, however, the artist goes a step further and once again makes use of photographic reproduction. He additionally overlays the photographs with a colored layer, which distances the faces even further, but at the same time makes them a product of our time. Artificially designed, even the small pins that are essential to hold suggest not to lose sight of big questions of humanity: what do we humans allow ourselves to be fixed or "stuck" on? Do we really consist only of the one face or are we just such collages from the archives of our lives? Probably there is also a spark of truth in the fact that physical and psychological similarity exists between people: likeness.
Look-a-likes
The central concern of Harding Meyer, when he reinvents faces, seems to be the human-emotional perspective. In juxtaposition, viewers often discover parts of the photographic series in the painted portraits and vice versa. Despite the major differences, the two series respond to each other. Harding Meyer discovers in the classical subject of portraiture a new - media - dimension that points to the future. At the same time, he looks at the (self-)representation of Generation X with satirical, suggestive means, but still leaves room for interpretation. In different sizes Harding Meyer shows a spectrum of possibilities to depict faces from childlike to adult. His multi-layered work refers to traditions, criticizes the present and plays with the viewer's gaze.
Mag.a Lucia Täubler
Literature references:
Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Reproducibility, 1935.
Walter Benjamin, Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire, 1939
