Chiens - Inventaire graphique authentique et fictif

Chiens brings together 200 drawings by Jochen Gerner, conceived in the wake of his study of birds published in 2021.

Thought-provoking or observational, these drawings were structured between March 2022 and April 2023 on the fine horizontal and vertical lines, checkered or millimeter, of Chinese geometry notebooks or writing pads from Indian provinces. The technique of felt-tip pen with pigmented Indian ink on school notebooks continues Jochen Gerner’s graphic experimentation, exploring the potential of the grid in the representation of fur textures.

Simple, supple, quasi-abstract shapes, punctuated by two or three dots (eye and nose), make up the dog silhouettes of the first drawings in this collection, which now features a varied inventory of real, semi-real and chimerical dog breeds. The dog, a domestic mammal descended from the wolf, broken down into multiple breeds resulting from crossbreeding and evolution, has the particularity of being singularized by dimensions, contours, textures and coats in countless variations: Bichrome Cattle Dogs with moiré coats, Slovakian Wirehaired Pointers, Electrostatic Chow Chows, Bichon Frise, Barzoi Greyhounds with sinuous fleeces, Irish Water Dogs with cloudy coats, Picardy Blue Spaniels, Scottish Terriers with conifer spikes, Mikado Spitzes…