STATEMENT OF WORK

Christophe Lennox lives in Oslo, Norway, and works intuitively, painting from memory and imagination.

Having struggled with depression and addiction, he returned to painting as a form of sanctuary during the pandemic. 

He describes visiting a communal garden and observing the transformation of rhododendrons through the changing season - from glossy leaves to barren branches - a process that became a metaphor for personal transformation. 

-Noelle collins, curator at Towner gallery. 

"My work all comes from the experiences of my life. Those experiences, though personal, often speak about larger themes of love, death, addiction, depression, sexuality, and identity. Painting for me is routed in the process of painting and through that process these themes reveal themselves organically." – Lennox

A 'birdkeeper'. To keep something usually means to care or protect. For a bird keeper the connotations are quite the opposite; it’s a robbery of freedom. A menacing feeling, to be held in a cage, but maybe to some welcomed or necessary. Or maybe to all of us, the true nature of things.

A prison of ideas and a nature that is free. Rhododendron twisting and turning at natures will, they curl up and turn black in winter and spring up green come the sun. The pollards look proud although they are pruned – pampering alleys and streets, exquisitely hacked and trimmed. They are beautiful even though they are not themselves. To be oneself, and to be free, is a journey; in and out of the cage.

An observer can only be as good as what he notices he fails to notice. Observing and reflecting. Art is life observed.

Art is tiny needles piercing through the veil, and bubbles of blood come seeping out. Once the blood has soaked the fabric, paint it all white again and start scratching. A white painting is different from a blank canvas.

Art is life observed. For Christophe Lennox painting is only the process of which to surface life, and maybe also to survive it.

- Exhibition text by Marius Nakken Larsen