This is appetizing painting, full of richly coloured flavours. Whichever way you turn, shapes
cascade around the canvas, diagonally, spilling over its edge to come yet closer to us, grabbing our eyes'
attention. Sometimes the animation quietens down - a freeze frame reveals itself as a close-up.The lull is
suddenly illuminated by a flash of recognition.We had been led astray at first by the strength of the
colours, but we can now perceive familiar images. For the object of the painting only yields up its secrets
slowly, and even then will never impose itself on us.
Yes, those are bananas - yes, that's an orange. And over there, within the close-knit strokes, we can
unravel sweets or appetizers - with greater or lesser ease. All of this can be eaten, yet it is not physical
hunger which is awakened. Greediness is of a different order here. But as subjects linked to food are a
part of everyone's day-to-day life, the effect of the painting is here made even more manifest. It would in
fact be more correct to speak of patterns, of "motifs" rather than of subjects, for right from her first life
modelling work, it was not objects themselves, with their whole chain of iconographical meanings, which
caught Catherine Kirchhoff's interest, but rather the shapes which compose them. She plays with the
plastics of objects, making them lose all obviousness. Only the physical characteristics of the painting,
the bold colours and the sharp forms, are willingly, clearly defined. For the rest, suggestion takes over
certitude. Let the spectator make of it what he or she wills.
After drawing nudes, objects, then arrangements of objects, Catherine Kirchhoff naturally turned to
advertising, a world which has always fascinated her in all its aspects. Packaging and advertising graphics
now form the structure of her painting, emphasizing the effect of the distance taken towards the final
subject. The titles of her painting appear as anodine as the images which underly it, simply incorporating
a reminder of the visual ingredient, adding a touch of humour and a toothsome bite.
Her choices are made on impulse : once a reproduction inspires her, she sticks closely to its two-
dimensional forms, which must be supple, varied and irregular, carefully following the outlines of the model
in her drawing. But once colour is applied, her freedom runs riot.There are no rules here, and in particular
no descriptive function.The sharp, contrasted chromatics of her painting, defined subjectively, depend only
on the relationships between the tones, according to the surfaces which they animate.
Computers are of great use to her in defining her projects. As a tool, they are perfectly adapted to her
desire to keep reality at arm's length, as well as to her mode of applying flat colour. But the act of painting
itself, the physical contact with the canvas, pleases her enormously, and she consciously retains the
liberty to modify certain forms or colours during the progress of the work. As she is satisfied only when the
colours she has chosen are completely saturated, several layers need to be applied.After briefly working in
charcoal, she has come to adopt acrylic, a medium which offers her the smooth and opaque colours
which she seeks and the possibility of sharply defined limits between surfaces.
This technique is also particularly well suited to the large formats for which Catherine Kirchhoff shows
a preference. By opting for outsize canvases, the artist completely immerges the viewer in the picture,
implicating him or her in the partisanship of her viewpoints. From the very outset, she has isolated details
of bodies or of objects, blowing them up to the extent that they become identifiable only with difficulty.
From fragmentary elements centred on the canvas, she has now evolved towards the fragmentation of the
pictural surface by the proliferation of a design repeated on the entire canvas and yet further Further, for as
the centre bursts out, the limits of the canvas can no longer contain the plastic events, which swarm and
spill over. It is "all over", a space opening up onto the exterior, a consequence of the intense interior
animation.
Off centre and beyond frame, the painting abandons all the ingredients of figurative representation : no
chiaroscuro, no perspective. Shadows exist only as a pretext for colour and perspective is no longer even
a memory. Surfaces are flat, space is planar. Breadth replaces depth. Figures become background, as
background takes on its own body.
Of the reality of the subjects, only the logic of their formal organisation is left.The aim is not to copy,
but to understand shapes. Moreover, the changes in scale and the total independence of colour bring the
work yet further from a reality which already is no more, since the object which serves as a stamp does
not come directly from reality but from advertising, whose reason for being is not to bear witness or to
contemplate, but to be efficient. Image of an image which is already itself reflected, an image squared in
fact, this painting plays with shapes and colours by peeling off their varnish of familiarity and transforming
them into an interrogative presence, by the shift between that which is habitual and that which is
unaccustomed.
To unleash vision and rediscover once more what it relishes, and to devour with gusto, yet with our
eyes only...
Traduit par Marie-Hélène Aune Hancock
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