Norman Harman: The Art of Digital Fragments and Analog Realities

Decoding the Dualities: The Multifaceted Expression of Norman Harman’s Art”

Norman Harman ’s body of work is characterized by his unique use of minimalist palettes set against decaying urban settings. His over-painted digital works reveal the beauty of lost transmissions and corrupted imagery at the intersection of utopia and dystopia found within the futuristic landscapes of works like “Cartoon Cavalcade”.

Norman Harman ‘s distinctive style, characterized by his usage of pixels and pulled paint, finds echoes in Richter’s oeuvre, while his distorted figurations channel the essence of Francis Bacon and Frank Auerbach — influences, refracted through the prism of AI and generative art, facets he continues to explore and experiment with.

Norman’s style crosses multiple genres, painting, photography and now the use of AI as a tool; there is a constant within the work and that is the relationship between the abstract and the figurative. In particular, he tends to deconstruct the composition and rebuild it with brush marks and geometric forms with the aim of creating tension between the image and the viewer.

The result is a binary practice, exploring the discordant interference between the physicality of paint and the ethereal realm of digital, where every layer of corruption becomes a suggestion, a nudge towards a space that hovers between the familiar and the obscure, abstraction and figuration.

These layered narratives often mirror current social and cultural landscapes, echoing most resoundingly in works like “Android Plaza – Electronic Host II”.

Similarly, The Pentland Experiment series explores the detrimental impact of capitalism on his very own hometown, Edinburgh, which he depicts through highly staged, dystopian compositions drawn from his extensive collection of photography, found imagery, and TV stills.