Andreas Hochuli: Chaleur et sommeil

The Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève presents in its Project Space a series of paintings by Andreas Hochuli, artist-in-residence during the last four months.

In his work, Andreas Hochuli explores pictorial techniques and creates compositions with source images, at the crossroads of tradition and modernity. He builds motifs, be they bodies, characters or everyday objects. He often finds and selects his visual elements on websites and blogs, as he strolls through a pool of everyday images. He then reworks them using image processing software and integrates them by using these as stencils, thus creating real entanglements of visual and textual components. As a result, even if his canvases are made according to the same protocol, almost mechanically, each becomes a unique creation.

Chaleur et sommeil, the title chosen by the artist for this exhibition, evokes summer’s gentle melancholia. A serenity is suggested by a female body dressed in a light ruffle dress, the reflection of a bather in the water as well as satin and radiant colors. These recent pieces, most of which were made during his residence at the Centre, are exhibited for the first time. They reveal, in a poetic tone, the influence and the hold of the beautiful days on our moods.

A quasi-polyphonic music, composed by the artist, resonates in the exhibition space at regular intervals. Messages, words, fragments of sentences are often inscribed on his canvases. Writing is indeed an essential component of Andreas Hochuli’s artistic practice. He compensates here the silence of his paintings by inviting a language of sound, spoken words, to accompany his works.

For more information please visit Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève.