Larsen / Warner is very pleased to present Under The Harvest Moon, a group exhibition featuring the work of Hernan Bas, Olafur Eliasson, Rafael Ferrer, Ludvig Helin, Dimitra Liogka, Masao Nakahara and Joan Snyder. The exhibition takes as its point of departure Carl Sandburg’s poem “Under the Harvest Moon from 1916, engaging with the poetic interplay between nocturnal imagery and the cycles of renewal. The works presented examine the manifold dimensions of the night; its liminality, its capacity for reflection, and its mystical resonance, while simultaneously attending to the regenerative motifs of the poem’s latter sections, in which blossoms, spring, and new beginnings emerge, reminding us that even in darkness, life pulses and possibility thrives.
Through a range of media and approaches, each artist explores the dialectic between darkness and illumination, stillness and emergence. Moonlight functions not merely as a visual phenomenon but as a symbolic and conceptual mediator between the known and the ineffable. Likewise, the evocation of blooms and seasonal transformation gestures toward temporality, continuity, and the inexhaustible potential for renewal inherent in both nature and artistic practice. Under the Harvest Moon positions these works within a broader discourse on the aesthetic and philosophical implications of night, mysticism, and cyclical change, offering a space in which the ephemeral and the eternal converge. Together, they invite contemplation of the dualities Sandburg celebrated—the serene and the mysterious, the night and the promise of dawn.
_
Joan Snyder (b.1940, NY, USA) is an influential American painter renowned for her for her paintings that blend abstraction with textural and material experimentation. Her paintings are held in major collections, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Snyder has been recognised with numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and honours from the National Endowment for the Arts. Snyder created her series of “Moon” paintings during the 1980s that marked a significant shift toward more overt symbolism, emotional intensity, and spiritual resonance within her work. These paintings expand Snyder’s earlier investigations of the brushstroke into a more mythic and bodily language. They transform abstraction into a site of personal and collective meaning, where the moon becomes both a cosmic presence and an intimate emblem of female identity and emotional life.
Hernan Bas (b. 1978, Florida, USA) is known for lush, atmospheric paintings that often depict solitary figures inhabiting dreamlike landscapes. Bas’s paintings create psychologically charged spaces where nature mirrors inner emotional states. They feel both nostalgic and contemporary—referencing art history and constructing intimate, modern myths about youth, imagination, and self-invention. Bas’s work has been exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions around the world, including a major presentations at the Rubell Family Collection and The Brooklyn Museum. His work is part of the permanent collections of New York’s Brooklyn Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art among others.
Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967, Denmark) is a contemporary artist renowned for his immersive installations and sculptures that explore perception, light, and natural phenomena. His work often engages viewers in direct sensory experiences, highlighting the interplay between environment, human perception, and elemental forces. Eliasson has exhibited internationally at institutions including the Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Venice Biennale. Eliasson’s Moon watercolours are part of an ongoing series in which he systematically paints the moon as a way of marking time. Begun in 2019, the project involves creating a small watercolour each time there is a full moon. Each work depicts a simple circular form representing the moon, but no two are identical. Using layered washes of watercolour, Eliasson builds subtle gradations and atmospheric depth within the circular format. The pigment bleeds, pools, and overlaps, making the process of water and colour interaction visible.
Dimitra Liogka (b. 1997, Zavala Greece) just completed her MA in Fine Art at Konstfack, Stockholm. Using layered washes, translucent veils of pigment, and carefully modulated tonal shifts, Liogka creates compositions that feel at once otherworldly and yet rooted in a deeply human experience. Through subtle material gestures and nuanced colour relationships Liogka creates paintings that unfold gradually. Encouraging the viewer to become attentive to the subtle nuances of atmosphere, rhythm, and mark making, Liogka skilfully balances the constant back and forth between atmospheric abstraction and figuration
Rafael Ferrer (b. 1933, Santurce, Puerto Rico) is a pioneering Puerto Rican–American artist whose multifaceted practice spans sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, installation, and performance. Ferrer emerged in the 1960s as an innovative figure in conceptual and process art, creating ephemeral installations and actions that challenged conventional art forms. His work has evolved through dynamic phases—from early assemblages and actions to rich narrative painting such as Rio Limón, 1987, that features in the exhibition. His pioneering work consistently engages with ideas of identity, materiality, and cultural memory. Over a long and varied career, he has exhibited widely in solo and group shows at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and El Museo del Barrio.
Ludvig Helin (b. 1988, Norsesund, Sweden) is a contemporary painter whose work moves between abstraction and narration, exploring the expressive potential of colour, structure, and spatial tension. He graduated from the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts in 2016 and lives and works in Alingsås, Sweden. Helin’s paintings invite the viewer into nuanced fields of colour where sharp hues and earthy tones interact, creating compositions that balance the intelligible with the suggestion of emergent form. His work is held in several public collections, including Region Sörmland, Uddevalla kommun, Umeå kommun, and Region Uppsala, and he has received awards such as the Konstnärsnämndens Assistentstipendium (2018) and the Vera and Göran Agnekil Scholarship for younger artists (2019).
Masao Nakahara (b. 1956, Saitama) is a Japanese painter and sculptor based in Düsseldorf whose work moves between memory, dream, and metaphysical reflection. After early artistic training in Japan, he relocated to Germany in the early 1980s to study at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, exhibiting in the late 1980s and early 1990s before stepping away from the art world for several decades. His return to public exhibition in 2021—encouraged by longtime friend Yoshitomo Nara and marked by participation in a group exhibition at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf—introduced renewed attention to a body of work shaped quietly over many years. Nakahara’s paintings and sculptures are populated by solitary, childlike figures, animals, and symbolic forms suspended in ambiguous, dreamlike spaces that evoke transitions between waking and dreaming, presence and absence, and life and afterlife. Drawing on both Japanese sensibilities and European expressionist traditions, his restrained palette and delicate surfaces create an atmosphere that is at once intimate and quietly monumental, offering poetic, open-ended images in which memory feels fluid and time circular.
