After the woven media-collages "Daydream & Nightmare "from Margret Eicher and the antipodal "Go & Stay "from Barbara Kruger now the artist Henrik Schrat (*1968) living in Berlin produces the third "Double Wall Project "in the Ludwig Forum for International Art in Aachen. Under the irritating title "Intend to tan & withdrawal-syndroms " he covered the two biggest opposite walls of the house with a black-figure mural and involves the observer into a rich narrative event.
Current developments of the ownership-maintenance of the fortress Europe form the starting point of his considerations on the one hand and the continual migration movements into this affluence-refuge Europe - intact only still from outside - on the other hand.

In a visual language inspired by comic, science fiction and silhouettes Henrik Schrat develops scenarios full of irony and ambivalence. While the central figure of an armed old man is sent on one side into the incipient fight about well-loved privileges, strands opposite a tanker full of invaders and takes the rescuing shore under the leadership of a Minotaur giant by storm.
Everywhere the walls swarm of cranky inner-scenes, flanking the main-conflict arabesk. Sometimes they appear to be the fairy-tale-style essence of the daily media-mix from politics, economy and society.
With this integrative base of thought, Henrik Schrat belongs to the prominent and provocative artists of a young generation, which work beyond the protection-zones of aesthetic nobility and articulate themselves in the consciousness of miscellaneous precarious situations as mindful contemporaries.
Harald Kunde