With Head Full of Flowers, we present two central groups of works by Sebastian Herzau - a painter who questions the boundaries of perception, pictorial tradition and the present with subtle precision. Between illusion and irritation, an oeuvre unfolds that simultaneously quotes and transcends classical painting.

Sebastian Herzau (*1980, Schönebeck) succeeds in opening up the genres of portrait and still life - for contradictions, for irony, for depth. Herzau is one of the most independent voices in German figurative painting. After studying at the Burg Giebichenstein School of Art and winning several awards, he has created a body of work that consistently moves between representationalism and dissolution. His paintings appear quiet - and yet are challenging.

In The Great Below, faces appear through a transparent veil - familiar and at the same time distant. The portraits are not classic images, but mirror images of our own perception. The veil is not a mere gesture, but a space of thought between closeness and distance, the visible and the hidden. Herzau directs our gaze to seeing itself - to what is revealed and what is hidden. The stillness of the pictures carries a tension that binds us for longer than we expect.

Herzau's floral still lifes quote the language of the old masters - and at the same time break it up. Vases with names such as FLIMRA or VILJESTARK stand between magnificently painted blossoms. It is a game with hierarchies: art history meets mass culture, the decorative meets subtle irony. The flowers themselves seem to elude us - blurred, enraptured, almost dreamlike. But it is precisely in this blurriness that their presence lies. Transience and beauty, painterly frozen in the moment.

• Vernissage: Friday, 25th April, 7pm - 10pm
• Open Sundays: 2pm - 4pm - 27th April, 4th May, 11th May, 18th May, 25th May, 1st June (we are also happy to show it to you via an individual appointment!)