Hartwig Hamer (*1943) – Vibrations of Silence / Vibrationen der Stille

More than 60 works will be exhibited to mark the artist’s 80th birthday.

The extensive special exhibition honours the work of the draughtsman, etcher and painter Hartwig Hamer on his 80th birthday. The show brings together more than 60 works from all creative phases and illuminates the various thematic facets and technical possibilities of his much-acclaimed art.

The work of the artist, born in Schwerin in 1943, which has already attracted attention in prominent art institutions such as the Staatliches Museum Schwerin or the Gerhard-Marcks-Haus in Bremen, stands out in its consistency and coherence. Created exclusively on paper, it shows a unique handwriting of the highest subtlety and intensity.

Hamer’s great theme is the plain that stretches to the horizon under a wide high sky. In his works, the sky is full of fluidity, is meaningful, far beyond an interpretation of weather phenomena. The spatial content that Hamer sees consists of the present, of knowledge and memory in an expansive dimension. This also includes the traces of human building and activity in the landscape. Urban silhouettes appear again and again – often with striking buildings that symbolically mark the horizon: Towers of mighty cathedrals as well as the loading cranes of large ports on the Baltic and North Seas. Hartwig Hamer’s relationship to Fischland and Darß, especially to Ahrenshoop, is close. In numerous sketchbooks and single sheets, Hamer recorded impressions of this landscape and interpreted its peculiarity.

The exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Ahrenshoop is accompanied by a catalogue with guest contributions by various authors and numerous illustrations.