Christopher Gerberding

The act of contemplation supposes the acceptance of the feeling of lostness. For one to wander in its own psyche, one must accept renouncing the most familiar paths to engage in the unknown.

Christopher’s art is a painting of the search. He shows us, not the abyss or the infinite that one contemplates, but the very feeling of contemplating those. Through dark, pathless forests too landless seas along a blind road, the wanderer seems still in their wake, like a ship slowly drifting into the night.

Whence one comes does not matter any more than where one goes: the act of going from the unknown to the unexpected is the only relevant notion. One is a watchman, looking forward with apprehensive patience.

In what seems to be an endless night, light is scarce and far away, but always bright. An uncertain purpose, the wanderer being left to decide if it is prompt lightning or the sun of a new dawn, those who choose the latter committing an act of faith.

Ghostly, lively colored figures sometimes amble around, like a hallucination, or a cryptic sign. Once the mind reflects over its meaning, the form acquires one. What makes the difference between reflecting over a sign which meaning is indecipherable, and over a meaningless sign? One’s sanity, the limits of which are blurred here.

His drive is about faith and dreams, longing for meaning.

It shows us the bizarre thrill that lives within the still waters of contemplation.
And it is from this struggle that art emerges, a nightmarish forest of signs hosting it. It is in the midst of it all, that appears the first brushstroke of a dream.

Philippe Deslous Paoli