The artist Harm Gerdes in his studio in Athens, Greece, with one of his works.
By NOAH BECKER 8 August 2024
Noah Becker: I met you in Athens when I was in Greece for the George Condo show at Dakis Joannous DESTE Foundation. Did I meet you at the Breeder Gallery? We also had a lot of fun the next day at your studio visit…
Harm Gerdes: It was at the Breeder Gallery, where you and your friend and consulting editor Carson were at the opening of the Maria Joannou exhibition. Yes. And then we started talking…
Noah Becker: Carson met you and your boyfriend first, then I was introduced. Right. And I found out you were a painter, and I visited your studio and saw your work. And you’re currently exhibiting at the prestigious international gallery Peres Projects?
Harm Gerdes: That’s right. Yes.
Noah Becker: Peres Projects has multiple locations?
Harm Gerdes: Yes, Peres Projects is actually American, and Nick, his partner who runs the gallery, and Javier started in San Francisco and LA, I think. And then he moved to Berlin, and now they are in Berlin, in Korea and in Milan. I have now exhibited with them in all three locations.
Noah Becker: Right. And is there another show coming up soon?
Harm Gerdes: I just finished one in Milan two months ago and am now discussing other projects, but we are still in the phase where we don’t talk about them.
Noah Becker: Right, of course. And what about Athens? Tell us a little about your story, for example where you come from?
Harm Gerdes: My father is German and my mother is from Cyprus. Cyprus is a small island. It’s like its own country, but people speak Greek. They are very close to Greek culture and everything. So I grew up with my mother speaking Greek, and right after COVID I was still living in my small hometown near Frankfurt. I had already started working with Peres, I decided I wanted to move, and I decided I wanted to move somewhere where I could speak Greek. That was to connect more with my maternal side…
Studio view, Athens, Greece.
Noah Becker: I understand. Let’s talk a little about your work. Tell me what inspires you.
Harm Gerdes: My work is very abstract, but I think you can call it a kind of abstract-figurative painting because everything is very precise. I have some very loose sketches here that I do on Japanese paper. And I scan these doodles. I work a lot with Procreate and refine the whole image until I start the actual painting. So it’s a lot about composition, but at the same time it’s a very free and intuitive approach to the work.
Noah Becker: Where do you get your inspiration for the colors? You use a lot of green and things that almost look like natural colors.
Harm Gerdes: Yes, the colors. The colors and also the first, let’s say, sketches are very intuitive. So if I look at work of mine that I did three years ago, I hardly used green. And for some reason now I started using quite a lot of green in some more recent works. Greece is very bright, there is a lot of sun all the time. So my colors have become more vibrant, brighter in a way. And if I look at my German works, the colors are much more muted and maybe kind of darker. And then I have some very splashy elements, like bright or pure colors in this work. But now all my colors have become a bit brighter. They have somehow become a bit more natural, I would say…
Studio view
Noah Becker: Yes, exactly. Not too decorative, but almost forest-like or something?
Harm Gerdes: Yes, no. I always try to balance that out because I also work with airbrush to avoid that graffiti connotation. If I paint a green picture, you see a purple shade in it. And graffiti, let’s say, has this very loud monochrome nature or pieces of color that come together. You can think about tones, tonalities. So there is this musical element of harmonies and interruptions. That’s how I think about color. It gives the picture a certain sound.
Noah Becker: What question do people often ask you when they look at your work?
Harm Gerdes: People always ask how it’s done. Nobody understands how it’s done because the technique I use is very unique. I basically invented it myself. People don’t understand that they see a canvas because the surface is very flat and they always think it’s some kind of board. And then when they look at the elements, they realize that there’s some kind of airbrush technique involved because they’re more familiar with it. And this pouring technique that I use and that I also showed you in the studio is something that nobody understands. They just understand that there’s something that’s done differently because you have these parts on the canvas that stick out.
Noah Becker: Almost sculptural and painterly at the same time.
Harm Gerdes: Yes.
Noah Becker: Do you ever make things that are just sculptures?
Harm Gerdes: No, I don’t. At the moment I’m just painting. During my studies I also did some sculptural work, but at the moment I’m just focusing on painting because I also found out that in the painterly space you have the possibility of illusion and I feel that that’s already enough and there’s so much more you can do on the canvas alone.
Studio view, Athens, Greece.
Noah Becker: Yes, it is a challenge to achieve the desired surface when working, because the surface determines the result in a way. And people who don’t paint a lot don’t really understand that. So when you say you invented something, how can you describe that invention?
Harm Gerdes: It’s important to know that I didn’t say, “I want to invent something new.” A few coincidences happened that led me to this. And you have to know that I used to paint with oil paints. When you paint with oil paints and then switch to acrylic paints, you hate it because of the yellow. You have to apply 50 layers of yellow. And I had to change paints because I was allergic to turpentine, and turpentine is in every oil paint you can buy. So I thought to myself: OK, I’ll use acrylic paints. There’s none of that stuff in them – but what else can I do with the paints if I don’t use the brush?
So actually through Tauba Auerbach’s work, do you know her? She also uses some of these pouring mediums with acrylics. I actually found her work very beautiful and that made me more interested in this technique that I could maybe work with as well. So I bought some of these pouring things. You can watch tons of these videos everywhere where they do these flip cup things and then you just pour it onto the small canvas. You tip it, etc.
Studio view, Athens, Greece.
Noah Becker: Are you talking about liquid glass?
Harm Gerdes: No, I’m talking about acrylic pouring medium. If you type “acrylic pouring medium” into YouTube, Reels or whatever, you’ll see thousands of videos of people putting paint in a cup, say, three colors in a row, and then flipping the stuff over. And because the paint doesn’t melt, it creates these beautiful effects on the canvas. So it’s very easy to create something somewhat appealing, but then to actually make something really beautiful with it is very difficult because the material is hard to tame.
Tauba Auerbach does very beautiful work with this material. They are older ones of hers, I think they are about 10 years old or so. And I started working with it too. And then I developed a feel for the material and figured out that I could use a kind of wire that I would glue to the surface, and I knew that from sculpting. So now I glue these kind of wires to a canvas that basically act like the drawing, the shapes that I want to create. I pour the acrylic in and then when it’s a bit dry and not moving so much anymore, say after a few hours, I take these wires off and it kind of fuses with itself, but the shapes remain.
Studio view, Athens, Greece.
Noah Becker: So it’s magic.
Harm Gerdes: It is magical in the truest sense of the word.
Noah Becker: Okay. I know you can’t talk about what’s going to happen next, but can you say what’s going to happen next or what to look out for?
Harm Gerdes: Yes, I mean, I will probably show some of my work in Greece for the first time next year and I’m really looking forward to that at the moment.
Noah Becker: Nice to talk to you. I have to go, but we’ll be in touch later today.
Harm Gerdes: Yes. It was a pleasure.
Noah Becker: Stay calm. World Cup
