Drawing inspiration from advertising, fashion photography and artists like Edward Hopper, Lichtenstein and Francis Bacon, Christophe Streichenberger combines different aesthetics on his canvases.
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French artist Christophe Streichenberger was introduced to drawing and painting at an early age by his two grandmothers, both artists. They guided him in his choice of colors and in the proportions of his drawings. He often accompanied them to museums and galleries in Paris where he discovered some of the great painters of the time, including Francis Bacon, who was to leave his mark on his work. Cinema, comics and advertising were also part of his daily life due to his parents' professional activities.
It was while working in the cinema sector of the Banque de L’Image in Paris, that he discovered the art reproductions of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, specially Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. He developed an urgent need to express himself once he felt introduced to this new world, so he started to try all forms of pictorial expressions, borrowing from each of his masters. That same year he launched his first exhibition in Gordes, France.
His painting combines two aesthetic approaches that one might suppose irreconcilable: a conceptual one, rooted in Streichenberger’s background in advertising appropriates geometric figures, sideral emptiness and cold colors; the other, expressive and organic proceeds from the influence that the twentieth century artists had on him and his artistic awakening. On the canvas, the fight between these two apparently antagonistic approaches can be either delimited strongly and even violently, or seamlessly combined and appeased.
There is a kind of corrupting disorder, or a mutant, proliferating fight present in Streichenberger’s works. One style dissolves into the other like an acid, but in the space of the canvas, there is neither winner nor loser, the confrontation does not cease. Streichenberger does not drop that mask, which pushes us as spectators to consistently dissect every contrasting aspect of his works.
Since 1993 he has devoted himself exclusively to painting and lives and works in the Luberon. He has exhibited in Chantilly, Gordes, Avignon ... He is present in several beautiful galleries in Paris, in Provence and in Switzerland.
JLF Gallery was created to promote artists and to contribute to the diffusion of their paintings, sculptures and other works, without language or cultural barriers. Dedicated to the primary market of contemporary art, with emerging artists, the gallery highlights new talents and the diversity of contemporary creation. JLF Gallery aims to be a new link, an innovative vector, which leads the work to its public.
Cover image: Christophe Streichenberger, Kodakiss, 2020. Courtesy of JLF Gallery
Written by: Zara Colombo
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