Art Intelligence Global, Nassima Landau, and T&Y Projects are delighted to present an exhibition of 11 new paintings by Christopher Hartmann. Held at T&Y Projects in Tokyo from June 25 to July 23, 2022, the show will be Hartmann’s debut solo exhibition in Asia. 

“In his new paintings Hartmann reveals a most intimate of spaces, emphasized by the rumpled sheets and pillow of an unmade bed, or a pile of clothes thrown hastily on a chair. A profoundly private bedroom with a presence or an absence of a body tends to be an elusive biographical record of loneliness. The bed is a spot of conflict, an emotional reminder of recently shared memories and at the same time of a painful seclusion. The erotically charged sheets, revealing and concealing the human forms, become a versatile means that stimulates fantasy and enhances elegiac feelings. The flow and the rhythm of the drapery, its twists of shapes and its sudden explosion of colors, is a celebration of abstraction, interrupted by an appearance of a leg, feet or hand. 

There is a long tradition in art history of mastery of painting drapery, veils or curtains. The image of fine silk and damask in Renaissance or Baroque paintings, which tells the story of Christ’s shrouds giving a shape to a grief without end, inevitably comes to mind. And the dark secret of the opulent tablecloths in Dutch still-lives adds in this context additional thoughts. 

The unmade bed with dents in the two pillows in Felix Gonzales Torres’ 1991 bed billboards, an homage to the artist’s partner who passed away, and Christopher Hartmann’s new paintings are both very personal metaphors, which examine the boundary between the private and the public.”

- Suzanne Landau

“The focus of this exhibition primarily lies on the protagonist's relationship with oneself. I intended to depict the motif of the bed as a place of heightened intimacy, whether with someone or alone. As the title suggests, in 'Not quite sleeping', the protagonist appears still awake, during the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep. I wanted to capture the half-dream state in which it is hard to escape emotions, desires or thoughts; making thus the bed an intimate and vulnerable place of self-reflection and self-confrontation.”

- Christopher Hartmann 

Christopher Hartmann (b. 1993, Germany) lives and works in London. After completing a BA in Fine Art from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Barcelona, Hartmann received an MA in Communication Design at Central Saint Martins, London in 2018 and an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, London in 2021. Since graduating, Hartmann has exhibited at Koenig Gallery, Berlin; GNYP Gallery, Berlin; White Cube, London; Hannah Berry Gallery, London; South London Gallery, London and Nassima Landau, Tel Aviv, amongst others. In 2020 Hartmann was awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Award. 

Suzanne Landau is the former Chief Curator of Fine Arts at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem (1998 - 2012) and former Director and Chief Curator at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2012- 2018). She is a co-founder of Nassima Landau, based in Tel Aviv. Most recently, Suzanne initiated and curated the retrospective of Yayoi Kusama at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.