Henrik Schrat
bangaloREsident@Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology

Henrik Schrat was born in 1968. He studied Stage Design and Painting in Dresden, and has a Masters in Fine Art Media at the Slace School of Fine Art, London (2002). From 2011 – 2016 he completed a doctoral thesis at the Essex Business School on the subject of visual narration within organisations. Economy as a subject and its interplay with culture is an issue Schrat has been and is concerned about. He has shown his work internationally since 1995.

Schrat works with different forms of visual narration. He likes to revert to traditional techniques like wood inlay (maqueterie), silhouette drawings or hanging scrolls. These techniques with their cultural preconditions are interpreted contemporarily. Thus come narrative graphics, different types of illustration and large scale murals into being.
 
Schrat's projects are resarch driven. Social, political and especially economic relations are the backbone of his projects. They are clothed in metaphorical, narrative surfaces, drawing on popular stories and folk tales. Henrik Schrat © Tassilo Bonzel This can range from fairy tales to the Starship Enterprise up until Harry Potter. And are entertaining, humoresque, and overflowing with narrative complexity. Hieronymus Bosch was surely an ancestor.
 
Central publications in his work are: A comic strip about the stock exchange, based on 40 interviews: The Appearance of Phantasie (2000); MyGeld (myMoney) based on a Radioshow about economy with Stefan Heidenreich in 2004; the One-Day-Comic series, and a Graphic Novel based on texts by American artist Dan Graham called Wild Things are Going to Happen, both for Eastside Projects, Birmingham. In 2012, three fairytales of the early 19th century by Sophie Tieck were illustrated for the German publisher Suhrkamp, (Belinde). In 2016, Bergenroth was published, a cooperation with historian Ursula Naumann about a 19th century social utopist (courtesy ACC Galerie/Museum Zittau).
 
Besides classic gallery pieces, a substantial part of his works are large scale murals. For instance at Forum Ludwig/Aachen Germany (2005/06), in Eat the Food, (MOCCA, Toronto) 2007, at Golden Eagle Art Center, Nanjing, 2013 or at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 2014. Milk and Honey, a mural for a dining hall of the German Parliament, playing on the European fairytale of Cockaigne (courtesy siebenhaar art projects) occupies an interesting position among the murals.
 
Schrat's project for Bangalore relates to his work with wood inlay objects. A technique, which could be called subversive nowadays: it is executed in wood, and utterly slow. Every copy calls for the same amount of work. The clash of traditional craft and high-tech is especially strong in Bangalore. Schrat is eager to look at the tension between technology on the one hand and human condition on the other: bodily dimension, tactile qualities, spatial surroundings and distances.

Final Report