Engramme – Ausstellung von Sebastian Harwardt

In the organizer's words:

With the exhibition Engramme, the Stadtmuseum Halle is continuing its long-standing practice of presenting contemporary positions by Halle artists.

Sebastian Harwardt's art focuses primarily on urban landscapes. His pictures show architecture in a special way: Buildings are isolated, reassembled or alienated. He is interested in well-known sights as well as inconspicuous places such as industrial areas, closed factory gates, kiosks or road markings. Beautiful and less beautiful sides of the city stand side by side on an equal footing.

The city views depicted often appear very precise and detailed, but at the same time unusual or dreamlike. Strong contrasts, superimpositions and surprising perspectives create pictorial spaces that appear real and unreal at the same time. The exhibition title Engrams refers to traces of memory - the works can be understood as stored impressions of urban life.

Harwardt works with great technical precision and uses various techniques. In addition to color woodcuts and screen prints, he also uses collages, painting and digital processes. In the series Beat (2022), architectural motifs are used to create multi-layered compositions of lines, shapes and transparent colors that impress with their clarity and rhythm.

The exhibition Engramme invites you to rediscover the city - as a place of memory, structure and surprising beauty.

About the artist

Sebastian Harwardt (*1982 in Stendal) studied graphic art with Prof. Thomas Rug at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle after studying humanities in Berlin. Since graduating in 2015, he has had numerous exhibitions in Germany and abroad. His work has been awarded several prizes and scholarships, including from the Kunststiftung Sachsen-Anhalt and the Kloster Bergesche Stiftungen.