“In many of my works I intend to describe the feeling of unresponded intimacy. A body touching without being touched.”
—Christopher Hartmann
In Christopher Hartmann’s A place to call home, painted in 2023, absence is made to feel present. Stretching over five feet tall, the eye is immediately drawn to the lamp at the upper left corner of the painting, illuminating a rumpled bedscape depicted in washed out blues and purples. The dramatized lighting highlights the lack of human presence in the bed, although the two pillows and comforter haphazardly arranged implies that one or perhaps two people may recently have inhabited this space.
Exhibited at his 2023 solo exhibition at Blum & Poe titled Nightswimming, the present work exemplifies Hartmann’s interest in portraying liminal spaces that are seemingly detached from time and space, but still carry strong feelings of both intimacy and alienation.
In some ways, Hartmann’s paint technique seems to mimic the layering processes of photo-editing software – imbuing his works with the alienating blue light of digital screens. He also has noted the influence of water on this series of works, which is where the exhibition title Nightswimming originated; whether suspended in water or in sleep, Hartmann finds these states of immersion to be charged with a heightened sense of emotion and reality. In this manner, the dreamlike rendering of A place to call home is evocative of a memory – whether real or imagined.
