Christophe Hohler

Christophe Hohler is a visual artist and painter with dual nationality, French and Swiss. He was born in Switzerland in 1961. He currently lives and works in France. He is a graduate of the School of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg. "There is something fascinating about the characters that Christophe Hohler stages. The term fascinating does not, however, convey with sufficient precision what happens exactly at the moment our eyes are set on these characters. In fact, these frail silhouettes present themselves to us with such disconcerting evidence that we are overwhelmed by it. By contemplating these unarmed beings, seized at insignificant moments of their existence, we realize how conditioned and hindered our gaze is. For a long time now, common decency has advised us not to stare too insistently at our fellow human beings. Shouldn't we be careful not to stare too long? Does common decency forbid us today from seeing (understanding) others? Christophe Hohler lifts this taboo, as an artist, as a man, he refuses to conform to this kind of convention. So, when asked where all his figures come from, the artist answers in all simplicity "it is by painting that the subject reveals itself". For some time now, in fact, he no longer needs a model in front of him to give a body to his figures. This is because his mental vigilance mobilizes his visual memory and his empathy. This fusion guides his hands, and in a few dazzling traces emerge This one, Character 12-01, Individual 1, Refugee Group... For he paints fast, very fast. You have to have seen him even once: in a few colourful lines, he invents a body and makes it look the way you want it to. You can then understand that he has integrated a multitude of observations and that he has memorized the forms that certain psychic states can take. And he erects them into true symptomatic images. He models the figure with his yellow, with the blue, the red. The red especially, the red of life. He does not seek individuality, nor resemblance, but rather, with an infallible precision that is characteristic of humanity in human beings. It captures an intimate part of them, their fragility, their luminous dignity. That which we refuse to see and which fascinates us here." Claude ROSSIGNOL His works are regularly exhibited in France, Switzerland, Norway and Germany.