Left alone to command a gallery, Christopher Hartmann’s exacting oil on linen paintings not only demonstrate his ability to render and imbue, but also make aesthetic demands on his viewers.
A single quality runs through his most recent paintings – a yearning that can be sensed in the artist’s loving rendering of skin and fabric, and in the peaks and troughs of ocean waves.
In a pair of works featuring king-size unmade beds, the artist’s staged lighting creates tinted penumbra and umbra across the picture plane. For these the artist was inspired equally by visits to Antwerp’s old master museums as sunrise and sunset photographed from his guest accommodation’s terrace.
Despite the sense of saturation and richness, the viewer would be correct in surmising that the artist is also withholding information about himself in order to make ambivalent room for his paintings to be art.
