Cosmos and Comic
The universal Mythologist Jens Harder
3 to 6 June 2010
Opening hours: Thu noon–7 p.m., Fri/Sat 10 a.m.–7 p.m., Sun 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Salon-Galerie

If you open Jens Harder’s debut comic “Leviathan“ and look at the first few pages you can find out much about his art. Quotes from important works of world literature stand at the outset: from the biblical book of Job, Milton’s epic “Paradise Lost”, or Thomas Hobbes’ philosophical text “Leviathan”. The accompanying art seems like sketches: a flying fish, like an interlink of evolution that combines the elements water and air, fol-lowed by references to images from medieval manuscripts. Jens Harder’s art never pretends to be an aesthetic illusion. It always shows that someone has drawn lines and worked with pen and paper. Jens Harder’s central topic is nature, filtered through culture. Culture always intrudes on nature, but is also a way of understanding nature and maybe even explaining it. Harder tells us about the great and greatest connections. About the cosmos, the ocean, the phenomenon of life (and therefore death) and the phenomenon of the human appropriation of the world through myths and archetypes. He has become a mythologist of comics. His books are epics and refer to epics. Harder’s visual lan-guage is polyglot and universal.
Herbert Heinzelmann

Reception in the exhibition: Saturday, 5 June 2010, 5 p.m.