Galleries in Paris

Gallery Anne Barrault is pleased to present Jochen Gerner’s new solo exhibition.
In 2002, TNT en Amérique was the starting point of his exploration of the potentialities of the recovering of an image with ink. Today, with this exhibition, Black Lagoon, Jochen Gerner continues to investigate this field, using a growing variety of printed documents: postcards, photographs from magazines, geographical maps, military maps, didactic images, movie posters, comic strips, etc.
The title of this exhibition refers to Jack Arnold’s horror movie, Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). In this thriller, a palaeontologist discovers, in the heart of the Amazon, the fossil of a hand belonging to an unknown species. He is convinced it is the missing link between man and fish, and he organizes an expedition to exhume the rest of the skeleton. So the team decides to go down the river by boat, going deeper and deeper into a wild and sticky hot territory, without imagining its waters still house the strange creature…On October 19th 1982, French viewers, with blue and red filter lens glasses, were able to see this film in 3D on their TV, a very new experience.
The phrase “black lagoon”, nearly an oxymoron, indicates a visible and flat surface as well as hidden depth. Jochen Gerner, keeping to his approach of the erased image and its recovering, gives the possibility of reading and interpreting this black matter. By his work on superimposition, he gives the illusion of totally reinterpreting the original image, invisible but potentially present under the black layer of ink. True to his experience of observation, Jochen Gerner views the visual world with an altogether analytical, critical and attentive eye. He is both inside and outside the images: simultaneously author and observer. Nevertheless, his viewing stands up to words; it is a process of juxtaposition, “ putting images side by side”, it is some sort of inventory, of listing.
“When working for several hours on the initial image, I completely enter inside its construction. I look for the rift, the interstice, which will allow me to really, and differently enter the image.”
This exhibition presents series of drawings on printed documents of all sorts. The drawings made up of multiple
surfaces covered with Indian ink look like as many little black lagoons.

Jochen Gerner, born in 1970, lives and works in Nancy.
A graduate from Nancy National School of Fine Arts, he is a member of OuBaPo. He analyses language and image by twisting visual codes. He is the author of several books such as Le Minimalisme (with Christian Rosset, Le Lombard, 2016), RG (with Emmanuel Rabu, L’Association, 2016), Panorama du froid (l’Association, 2013), Branchages (l’Association, 2009), Contre la Bande Dessinée (l’Association, 2008), TNT en Amérique (l’Ampoule, 2002). He also draws for the press (Le 1, Libération, le Monde, The New York Times…). His work was presented in solo exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts in Nancy (2015); gallery Anne Barrault (2013), at the Art and History Museum in Bastia (2012); at Lux in Valence (2011); in the Children’s Gallery of Centre Pompidou in Paris (2010); at the Museum of Modern Art in Luxembourg (2009) … His works were also shown in collective exhibitions at the Arab World Institute in Paris (2015); the Artothèque in Caen (2014); la Maison Rouge in Paris (2014); the Modern Art Museum in Moscow (2012); Berardo museum in Lisbon…

A monograph has just been published by B42 , and he has been awarded the 2016 Drawing Now award. For the Drawing Now Award, Jochen Gerner will present an exhibition at Christie’s Paris
from March 16 to March 24, 2017