Bendix Harms calls himself a Contentist.
The foundation of this attitude are painted subjects, who are operating as determiners and decision-makers - sending precise orders to his brain.
Harms becomes a kind of technical equipment – a receiver of commands, that can only be processed, when the relationship between him and the subject climbs on a steel-like level - achieved through love, hate, over motivated behavior, unexpected physiognomies, humans who put names to things and animals who put names to things.
Then the subject overtakes the command-center - like his wife Mari with her square- built-rascal-face, the blackcap bird with his concrete-grey body and his unscrewed black monk‘s head , Rufus the old black cat - the former owner of the farm Harms and Kollerup bought in Denmark, or Mamon the worthy successor - a black and white cow-cat.
The main subject of this show is the european blue tit. This bird conquered Harms antennas, because of their optical qualities, their fearless behaviour and a perky rascalness.
All are able to determine, and all are able to be formally reduced for generating a repeatable stamp - in Harms brain and on the canvas.
These stamps let his right arm work like a machine - equipped with any kind of spatulas, scrapers, brushes and liquids for dripping and paint tubes for squeezing out words linear elements and subjects.
The selected subject shouts his precise orders: generate me only in that way, because it‘s adequate for me, its adequate for the content, for the paint, for the tools and for art-history.
In the end of an artist‘s life only one thing matters: the difference of the work in relation to history.
For Harms it felts like a liberation from the traditional expressive brushstroke, because each new painting could start differently: dripped, scratched, thickly spackled, or: traditionally painted - completed in one session or 100 sessions – whichever the subject is demanding.
The narrative motif is the decision-maker, and Harms job is to paint them in order to make them speak.
- Bendix Harms