"Look at the apple, look at the peach, how round and full of life, cheeks to right and left; notice, too, my eyes, of which one cerise, the other mulberry. Outside I look a monster, inside I bear noble traits, concealing a royal portrait." (Don Gregono Comanini: "The Vertumnus of Arcimboldo", 1591)

We are delighted to announce the first solo exhibition of the young British painter Haroun Haward at Herrmann Germann Contemporary. Born in 1983, Haward lives and works in London. After earning a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from Brighton University (1st Class Honours), and following an exchange stay at Nagoya University of Arts in Japan, Haward was artist-in-residence at the Traditional Miniature Painting Department of Pakistan's National College of Arts in Lahore. He completed his MFA in Fine Arts at London's Goldsmiths University in 2010.

Haroun Haward: The Prodigal Son Among the Pigs, 2011

acrylic, oil, spraypaint on wood, 213 × 152 cm

Click on image to enlarge.

In "The Castle of Crossed Destinies", Italo Calvino describes various wonderous events and fates through a sequence of playing cards. These images, along with the interpreted verbal surface, form a self-contained narrative cycle based on fifteenth- and eighteenth-century tarot games. Just as in Calvino's novel, Haroun Haward's paintings are about tradition, narration, and interpretation. His narratives range from the history of the Northern Renaissance through the Persian Mogul Empire (1526–1858) to the present. Born and raised in North London to an English father and a Pakistani mother, Haward was raised in a cosmopolitan atmosphere of two cultures and their historical legacies.

While Haward's earlier work juxtaposed eastern and western motifs and symbols, he currently aspires to a dense, many-layered narrative and the possibilities this offers. "Mythologies" consists of several large-scale panels and nine works on paper. Composed especially for the forthcoming exhibition, these works pursue various approaches to pancultural narration. They fuse stories and myths from various cultures with comic elements and others referring to animation films, computer games, the cover designs of heavy metal albums, and meta-literature. Blending various techniques and colours on one and the same surface, Haward brings to life both stylistic and cultural hybrids. He employs a range of technical means, from the coarse "fat cap" (a spray can nozzle) to the miniature brush, to create two-dimensional collages and models that both invite and require close scrutiny.

Kindly supported by Kyburz&Peck - English Language Projects