Christopher Gerberding is an artist and curator.
He grew up in Paris and studied for one year at the Academy Julian until he moved to Germany. After his studies in fine arts at the HBK Braunschweig and the Villa Arson Nizza, he graduated in 2020 in the class of Prof.Frances Scholz. He is the Founder and Curator of the temporary Room. Currently, he lives and works in Cologne, Germany.
His artistic work mainly deals with romantic characteristics such as longing, invisibility, and projections of fantasies, fears, or consolation. Just like in painting, the landscape is the surface of the projection. It belongs to those who look. The act of contemplation presupposes the acceptance of the feeling of being lost. To wander in your own psyche, you have to accept to forego the familiar to get involved in the unknown and that without any guarantee.
It is about the search and the poker of the Loss. He is not concerned with the abyss or the infinite that you are looking at, but the feeling of looking at it.
Through dark, pathless forests, too landless seas along a blind road, the viewer still seems to be after something, like a ship slowly drifting into the night. Where you come from does not matter more than where you go: the transition from the unknown to the unexpected is the only relevant term for the painter, who delights with apprehensive patience. In a seemingly endless night, light is scarce and far away, yet bright.
An uncertain purpose, it must be decided whether it is an instant lightning bolt or the sun of a new dawn, and those who choose the latter commit an act of faith.
Gerberding's drive is about faith and dreams, about the longing for meaning and the state of nothingness. He is interested in the bizarre thrill that slumbers in the still waters of contemplation. From this struggle emerges the essence of his work.
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
Christopher Gerberding’s paintings are in a sensitive limbo between figurative painting and abstraction on the one hand and between painting and object on the other.
Gerberding’s references are seemingly unambiguous: One recognizes references to
William Turner, the late Monet, the late Rembrandt, the late Goya.
Yes, it is above all the late works of the old masters that fascinate Gerberding. As they grew older, they had to abandon their technical virtuosity in favor of an intense expressiveness, a more intuitive form of painting that partially anticipated Impressionism.
The Romantic period is also essential for understanding Gerberding’s artistic method. Romanticism referred to unattainable states of longing, such as childhood, natural idylls, and unfulfilled love. These themes also appear superficially in Gerberding’s paintings as pictorial motifs, but this is not the romantic aspect of his art. Gerberding strives for a painting that seems to have fallen out of time. Gerberding’s longing refers to the painting itself, in each of his paintings he tries to find this painting again. This fails, and this failure is modern, contemporary romanticism.
This romanticism also forms the core of Gerberding’s painting. Completely free of irony, he enters into intense emotional states in which he creates the paintings. These emotional states serve him as a source for his paintings. The role of the viewer is not clear. Should one lose oneself in the paintings, engage with the feelings, or regard the paintings as objects, as relics of spiritual action, similar to relics of Fluxus actions?
In this field of tension - between feeling into the pictures and viewing them from a distance - the pictures unfold their greatest vitality.
This is supported by the fact that Gerberding shows his paintings in object frames or
showcases, and they are thus shown simultaneously as objects and pictures. This makes one think of worshipping relics, or of the presentation of artists’ letters in larger retrospectives.
Similar to letters, Gerberding’s paintings also have a lot to decipher, a lot to feel and interpret. They require close examination, which can be both clarifying and enigmatic. Can a figure be recognized in the water? Are the persons portrayed in the throes of death or in love play? Is the effect of the landscape threatening or idyllic? Gerberding strives for the depiction of longing, for uncertain certainty, for the absolute desire to show something that cannot be represented. This attempt is on the one hand absolutely serious, on the other hand, it is to be understood performatively.
As if Rembrandt and Mike Kelley were to form an artist duo.
Jan Gerngross