PRESENTATION: Christopher Hartmann-On Your Own

Christopher Hartmann’s paintings present us with places in which specific time and space are suspended. They are concerned with relationships; how these are shaped by contradictory forces of alienation, intimacy, and dependence; and the emotional tension this instills within each of us as we negotiate their terms. Typically presented in moments of presumed dialogue or physical interaction, Hartmann’s subjects embody the desire for an authentic connection.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Blum Gallery Archive

The eeriness of Christopher Hartman’s work is symptomatic of the age we live in: an isolated, technology-driven, and oversaturated world where realism has been pushed to a simulated extreme. Using layers of oil paint that mimic the masks of photo editing software, Hartmann’s subjects radiate artificial tones of scarlet and yellow to evoke the luminosity of the screen, calling forth the strangely unfamiliar hue of our digital selves. Christopher Hartmann’s recent paintings in the exhibition “On Your Own”, examine the notion of reflection as a duplicate, a shadow, or, at times, only a hint of someone or something. Hartmann’s series of unmade, vacated beds allude to the bodies that once laid in them; his seascapes include distorted portraits of a man bathing, his face hidden from the viewer. This interest in what is not the thing itself but its remnants, in what is left behind and is doomed to fade and disappear, unleashes a set of emotions and themes that have long been present in Hartmann’s work—longing, closeness, despair, and desire as well as conflicting moods of intimacy and isolation. During recent travels in Florence, Italy, Hartmann was inspired by the stark tonal contrasts found in Italian Renaissance painting—as such, his newest works use darker tones that offer a heightened emotional intensity. Conceived for and staged within the striking Haussmannian architecture of a home constructed in 1880, the works on view in this exhibition seem to be removed from any particular time or place, opting to explore subtle narratives that link the figurative and the abstract, as well as the personal and the universal. The bed paintings can be read as metaphors for the vulnerability of sleep, the uncertainties of dream states, and the attachment of physical relationships. As Suzanne Landau has written, “A bed recalls the most intimate human moments, from sleep to sex, illness to death. It is a territory of emotional contacts between people, where feelings of attachment, love, and excitement coexist alongside sadness, dissociation, and pain. As an arena of conflict with a present or an absent body, the bed tends to be an elusive biographical record of loneliness. Creased sheets, impressions in the mattresses, and tangled mounds of clothing left on bed covers evoke the absence of the body. Hartmann focuses on these piles of clothing in a related series of small still lives.” The artist’s bed paintings are displayed alongside portraits of a young man emerging from the sea, the reflection of his face distorted in the rippling surface of the water. This and other seascape paintings exhibited here are analogous to the series of beds in the play between abstraction and figuration. The sea is a surface of waves and lights, but it is also the deep, which is hidden, unknown, and invisible. The ripples echo the folds in the bedsheets, suggesting different states of consciousness, unconsciousness, immersion, and flotation. The dualistic theme of visual and introspective reflection continues in a portrait of the same young man sitting on the edge of a bed, his back turned to the viewer but his face visible in a mirror. Through this painting and others that depict this figure in states hovering between relaxed contemplation and withdrawn melancholy, Hartma/nn further explores ambiguous moods of closeness and solitude. Presented in the ornate interiors of this former household, these works convey subtle narratives of presence alongside absence, past against present, and lived experience versus memory within a space that was once inhabited.

Photo: Christopher Hartmann, Ocean Blues, 2023 Oil on linen Two parts; 86 5/8 x 63 1/8 x 1 1/2 inches each Photo: Evan Walsh, © Christopher Hartmann, Courtesy the artist and Blum Gallery

Info: Organized by BLUM and Nassima Landau Art Foundation, Domus Maubourg, 29 Boulevard de la Tour-Maubourg, Paris, France, Duration: 15-29/10/2024, https://domusmaubourg.com/