Sebastian Herzau

Sebastian Herzau is always on the lookout for new challenges in classical painting techniques. He devotes himself mainly to the traditional genres of portraiture and still life, which he translates into his own artistic signature. He creates illusions in the sense of trompe-l'œil painting and ambiguous pictorial worlds that reveal his experimental curiosity. We are immersed in his pictorial worlds, often mysterious, as Herzau consciously works with alienation and overpainting. In the process, information is concealed, but at the same time a new kind of perception emerges. It is precisely this alienation and this hiddenness that create closeness and uncertainty at the same time, forcing the viewer to oscillate between the familiar and the known and the newly experienced. Sebastian Herzau's work focuses mainly on portraits and still lifes. The painter experiments with alienation and veiling and thus plays with the viewer's perception. The series of works "the great below" gives one the feeling of observing the portrayed person only dimly through a transparent veil. The artist creates intimacy and creates an interplay between distance and proximity, which opens the space for fantasies. His still lifes also move between dimensions. Herzau juxtaposes representationalism and abstraction by working with light incidence and delicate color gradients. The latest group of works are still lifes of flowers, which are not only coincidentally reminiscent of Old Masters. A series from 2022 quotes flower paintings by Henri Fantin-Latour quite specifically. By first meticulously copying them, then blurring them and giving the images titles of vases from the furniture manufacturer Ikea, he transforms the motif of the flower image into the present with a wink.