Storm
Postpainting
Circa 2025
In Storm, Harman delivers an existential dirge for the modern condition, staging a surreal theatre of collapse where sports, civility, and commerce drift into absurdity. A football match unfolds on a flooded boulevard as twin tornadoes spiral in the background—not as weather events, but as metaphysical forces, tearing through the façade of meaning we cling to in a world ruled by algorithms, waste, and amnesia.
This is not a depiction of chaos for its own sake. It is far more unsettling: the calm persistence of human routine amid clear signals of annihilation. Harman’s postpainting is smeared with contradictions—painterly brushstrokes disrupt photographic realism, and moments of clarity dissolve into digital static. It's as if history, memory, and sensation are being eroded in real time, leaving behind the trace of a culture addicted to spectacle and survival in equal measure.
The cars, the signage, the rubble—all relics of a society that believed itself permanent. The players run not to win, but because running is all they remember how to do. “Storm” is Harman’s bleak and brilliant indictment of a civilisation that mistakes momentum for meaning.
In the end, the painting doesn’t depict the storm. It is the storm.
