MYTHIC WORLDS

Press release

Henri Deparade MYTHIC WORLDS

Opening of the exhibition: 20 September 2019

Exhibition: 21 September – 8 November 2019

In the solo exhibition MYTHIC WORLDS Haleh Gallery presents art works by Henri Deparade. Henri Deparade (*1951 in Halle an der Saale) is a German artist who studied in the 1970s art and design at Burg Giebichenstein, the Academy of Fine Arts in Halle and taught art as professor at HTW in Dresden. Henri Deparade participated in numerous exhibitions at home and abroad and his works are included in many important private and public art collections. 

With the solo exhibition MYTHIC WORLDS Deparade provides an important insight into his artistic practice. The exhibition’s title refers to Deparade’s reflections of mythological protagonists from Greek mythology playing a significant role in his artistic works. Hence, we encounter in the exhibition Greek mythological heroes, such as Electra, Narcissus, and Medea. From their origin in antiquity, these mythological figures have hardly lost at topicality and continue to inspire contemporary artistic and literary productions to the present day. 

Henri Deparade’s artistic works are less an attempt to portray the antique heroes in detail, but they rather function for him as role models to convey a picture of human relationships and the resulting conflicts, as the artist explains: “My concern are personal experiences or self observed fields of tensions in human relationships. This means, internal conflicts, which can be represented through mythological characters. If the painterly realization is successful, anybody can encounter himself or herself with their personal experiences in my images.”

Henri Deparade realizes his expressed claim of universality in his art works, where he creates an artistic symbiosis between the means of painting and drawing. Contrary, to the classical depiction of mythological figures in antiquity or renaissance, Deparade does not employ any attributes to identify the depicted mythological figures. Still, one can discern for example the narcissist behavior of Narcissus from his posture. The figures emotional state is reflected through the deployment of artistic means and the drawn figures receive their wide-ranging and contradictory personal traits through superposition and overlapping of transparencies. Thus, a strong interaction between color and lines occurs and are intrinsically linked with each other. The expressive use of color and forms merges the naturalistic seeming bodies and faces intro abstract autonomous structures and by doing so creates new and independent shapes. Image content, line, form, and color become autonomous means of expression, which transform through their symbiotic relationship into a creative force in Henri Deparade’s mythic worlds. 

Henri Deparade (*1951 in Halle an der Saale, Germany) studied from 1972-1977 Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Halle, Burg Giebichenstein. From 1983-85 he was Willi Sitte’s master student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Halle. As professor, Deparade taught art at HTW in Dresden from 1992-2017. Since 1995 Deparade lives and works in Dresden. Since then he contributed to more than 100 exhibitions, he also had more than 80 solo exhibitions in Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and USA. His art works have been featured in national and international art fairs. Many of his works are part of private and public collections in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, USA, Italy, Luxembourg, and Belgium. 

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